Logan: A Trilogy

by William F. Nolan

  He left the belt at the Beverly overpass and began threading his way through Arcade.

  The immense pleasure center formed a never-ending human logjam. Arcade had not closed its doors to funseekers for over fifty years. The place was a vast crazy quilt of hallucimills, Re-Live parlors and fire galleries.

  Signs screamed and moaned in smoky colors: RE-LIVE THAT FIRST EMBRACE! (A gaudy Tri-Dim on a ribbed platform depicting two nude youngsters in a torrid tangle.) RE-LIVE THOSE PRECIOUS MOMENTS! (A wild-eyed boy riding a flamed devilstick through a mock sky.) RE-LIVE! RE-LIVE! RE-LIYE!

  Noise gonged; a thousand odors mingled; hawkers cried their wares. Here night was day and day was night

  “Wanta good time, citizen?” A man with one arm and a fog voice beckoned him toward a swinging door.

  Logan passed him quickly.

  He saw the sign he was looking for. It hit the window in a sulfurous shower and withdrew, hit and

  withdrew into the darkness behind the black glass. THE NEW YOU…THE NEW YOU…THE NEW YOU…

  Logan entered the shop.

  The waiting room was the color of ashes. The scattered pieces of furniture were faded, worn. Even the air in the room seemed used. An ancient chrome-plated desk hunched in one corner, and behind it sat a young woman in soiled whites. Her face was pale and predatory. She regarded Logan suspiciously.

  “You want Doc?”

  “I want Sanctuary.”

  The girl wet her lips with a small pink tongue. “Then you want Doc.”

  She rose listlessly, crossed to Logan. “Hand,” she said. He held up his right hand, palm out. Red-black-red-black-red-black.

  “C’mon,” she said. “Follow through for the new you.

  She led him down a musty hallway and into a large room smelling of metal. Logan recognized the thing in the center of the alum floor; he felt himself ice up. Table! The machine loomed over a flat metal bed that was grooved and slotted and equipped with fastening devices.

  “There’s not another like her outside a hospital between here and New Alaska,” said a harsh, confident voice.

  Logan whirled to face a thick bodied sixteen-year-old. The man’s bony features were split by a crooked-toothed smile. He wore a long gray smock which extended down to his shoe tops. Doc.

  “A little edgy, are you? Well, that’s natural. Runners are scared people. Least you got enough sense to start before your flower blacks. It’s tougher then, with the Sandmen onto you. What’ll it be, face job or full body? Could add a couple inches to those legs”

  “Just the face,” said Logan.

  “Got no time, is that it? Runners never got time.” A note of sad regret in the voice. “I won’t ask your name. I don’t want to know it. You got the punchkey and that’s good enough for me. Ballard knows who to give them to.”

  Ballard! Logan’s mind leaped. The world’s oldest man. A story to frighten children with. A legend. A subject for folk chants. Was there actually such a man—the force behind Sanctuary?

  “Holly will get you ready. If you’re worried about the Table, don’t be. They call me Doc , but I’m a trained mech. A real mechanic. Give me a basket of transistors and a pound of platinum sponge and I can make anything. You’re in good hands, believe what I tell you.”

  As he talked, the girl came forward to unbutton the collar of Logan’s shirt. The Gun was stuffed into his waistband, and he wondered if they’d want all his clothes off. Hiding the Gun would be impossible here.

  “Ask me what I’m doing in a shop like this if I’m so handy. I got my reasons. I make out. A little Muscle for the cubs, a sea lift now and then, a face job for Ballard—maybe a body change for some sick citizen who’s tired of himself. Adds up. I do all right.”

  The girl was brushing her fingertips lightly down Logan’s arms. There was a deep-blue spark in her eyes. “I’m Holly,” she said softly. “Holly 13. In ancient times they said my number was unlucky. Do you believe in luck?”

  Doc aimed another crooked smile at Logan. “Holly don’t work for the money. She gets her lift out of watching the Table—and other things.” His smile became a dry chuckle. ‘Back in a minute.”

  “Do I need to undress?” Logan asked the girl.

  “Not for a face,” she said. “That is, not unless you want to.”

  “What now?”

  “Empty your pockets.” She led him to the Table.

  It was one of the big brutes, a Mark J. Surgeon. Suspended over the flat bed was a glittering tangle of probes and pincers and scalpels, springs, clamps and needles. Tubes and looped wires interconnected from one part of the Table to another, crisscrossing the main body which contained the solid-state circuitry forming the machine’s memory center and brain. At one end was a console of buttons and switches, lights and dials.

  A Table such as this could lengthen bone and change dental patterns. It could broaden shoulders, put on or take off weight. It could alter germ plasma or blood groupings. With its infinitely adjustable lasers it could lay back the flesh surrounding a single nerve and lift out that nerve without nicking the sheath. It was as precise as a diamond cutter and as unemotional as a vending slot.

  Logan didn’t want to get on the Table. It could carve and change him, make him into another man. Holly 13 fastened down his ankles and wrists, then attached the sensors. The Table rippled, accepted his weight, positioned him.

  “I like dark hair,” said Holly, leaning close to him. The blue spark danced in the depths of her eyes. “Have him give you dark hair.”

  Doc returned to his patient. “Got anything special in mind?” he asked. ‘Bone structure like yours I could give you most anything.”

  “That’s your decision,” snapped Logan. “Just get it over with.”

  “Look, runner,” said Doc, his voice hard, “just you ease down. I tell you where to go, how to go and when to go. You runners are always in a hurry. Always trying to rush me. You don’t go nowhere without Doc . I handle this end of things. Can’t use the next key anyhow till nine forty. Got plenty of time for the new you.”

  Doc danced his, fingers over the control board as he studied Logan’s face. “We can widen those cheekbones for a start.”

  The Table began to hum as a pair of thin silver probes separated themselves from the overhead cluster and poised above Logan; a stun needle lowered toward his face; a vibrosaw began to keen.

  Abruptly all motion ceased. The keening died. An alarm buzzed insistently.

  Doc’s eyes narrowed. “Something’s wrong. We’ve got metal on the Table. You empty your pockets?” Logan nodded.

  Doc looked at him suspiciously. “Something ain’t right”

  He came out from behind the console, stood over Logan. The slight bulge of the Gun was visible in Logan’s waist. Doc pulled open his shirt, baring the weapon.

  “Lock the door, Holly.”

  “What is it?” she asked, moving forward. Doc shoved her back. “Gun!” he said. “We got a Sandman.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “I’m thinking.” Doc glared at Logan, helpless on the Table.

  “You’ve seen my hand,” said Logan. “I’m on Lastday. Does it figure I’d still be working for DS?”

  “You got a Gun,” said Doc . “Only DS men got Guns.”

  “I’m not the first Sandman to run.”

  “Why should I take a chance?” said Doc , moving back to the console. “I’m scrambling the Table. You’ll get more than a new face, Sandman.”

  Logan lunged against the straps, but they held fast.

  “What will it do to him?” asked Holly. The blue light gleamed in her eyes.

  “Anything. It’s on its own.”

  The Table hummed to life.

  “I want to watch,” said Holly, flushing.

  Doc chuckled.

  Logan looked up, sweating, into the moving cluster of pointed, bladed objects suspended above him. A stun needle lanced into his cheek, and the left side of his face went dead. A pair of metal clamps bit into his right
leg below the knee. A surgical scapel slit his shirt from shoulder to waist, leaving a thread of blood in its wake. A sponge dipped to wipe the blood neatly away.

  Desperately Logan sucked in his belly and tried to flatten himself into the Table.

  Beside him, Holly was breathing fast.

  A wide serrated blade shifted its downward sweep, moved three inches to the right and hovered. A pair of nervescissors snipped viciously at empty air, lowered abruptly and sliced through the strap that confined Logan’s right arm.

  Doc took a shocked step back as Logan clawed the Gun free.

  A rain of silver knives dropped toward him, and he hacked at them with the barrel. They snapped like icicles.

  Logan attempted to swing the Gun in Doc’s direction. “Kill the Table!” Lizard-quick, Doc was out the door, the girl behind him.

  The Table pumped a cooling alcohol spray on Logan’s chest as he clumsily freed his other wrist. Tiny lubricated gears inside the machine’s housing slid into new positions.

  Logan sprawled the upper part of his body off the bed and hit the leg releases. He rolled from the Table as it mindlessly attacked its own vitals.

  It died, shrieking, as sparks showered from the gutted machine.

  Logan considered his next move. Without another punch-key, which Doc apparently was to supply, his run was over. And it wouldn’t take a mouth like Doc long to spread the word: Sandman. The trail would end before it began.

  He kicked the back door open and found himself in a dank warren of intersecting hallways. The moaning cry of the fire galleries drifted up to him, mixed with the baked desert smell of dreamdust from the halluciomills.

  Something iced out of the gray half-darkness, knocking the Gun from his grasp. A glacier numbness chilled his arm from hand to elbow.

  Popsickle!

  Logan spun into a fighting crouch to face the dim white figure coming at him with the refrigerated police billy held at waist level. Doc, in for the kill.

  One blow to the chest and Logan’s body would be a sea of ice crystals, freezing heart action, stopping the breath in his throat. The Gun lay on the floor rimed with frost.

  He kept his eyes locked on the short smoke-colored stick in Doc’s practiced hand. The popsickle slashed air as Doc lunged past him. Logan twisted and fell to one knee in the classic Omnite attack position. His left elbow drove into Doc’s groin. With a soundless, choked scream, Doc slammed the wall, bouncing off into Logan’s knee, which caught him with a killing spinal blow.

  Logan swore bitterly, stripping the dead man’s pockets. I should have handled this without killing him, he thought. Now where’s the next key? Has the girl got it? And where is she? Probably hidden somewhere in the Arcade labyrinth.

  Logan retrieved the moist Gun, straightening to a sound in the next room. He moved carefully to the door, easing it open.

  Holly was inside, against the far wall, a medical knife poised at her breast. Her terror-glazed eyes were fixed on the Gun. As Logan advanced toward her she drove the blade into her chest.

  The world ended abruptly for Holly 13.

  Logan put away his weapon.

  “Doyle…Doyle…is that you?” A drugged voice.

  Logan stepped through an alum-mesh curtain. The cramped room reeked of anesthetic. A dark-haired girl, nude to the waist, was rising groggily from a pneumocot.

  She blinked dreamily at Logan. “It’s me—Jessica,” she said; her fingers tentatively explored the new planes of her face.

  A runner, thought Logan. Her hand is blinking. But why does she think I’m Doyle? And did she get the “Key. Do you have a punchkey?” he asked.

  “Doyle…you don’t look like my brother anymore. You don’t even sound the same. They’ve changed us.”

  So that was it: the girl was Doyle’s sister. He must have told her to meet him here. “Listen,” said Logan, “do you have the next key?”

  She was fully awake now, slipping into her blouse. He saw her remove a silver object from one pocket. Logan took it from her. A mazekey.

  “Did Doc give you any instructions?”

  “Yes. He told me—us—to use a branch tunnel under Arcade. I know where it is.”

  “All right then. Let’s go.”

  He followed her to a slideway. The plunged down into jeweled darkness. At the off ramp he took her hand. They ran along the maze platform.

  The maze. A million miles of tunnel, a veining of expressways serving the continents, interlinking Chicago with New York, Detroit with New Alaska, London with Lower Australia—a multitude of black-steel beetles burrowing the subterranean depths at fantastic speeds.

  Logan stabbed the mazekey into a callbox at the edge of the platform.

  A distant brass -humming along the tunnels, a rocketing rush of deep-earth winds; the mazecar blazed out of darkness and socked into the boarding slot.

  They climbed in. The hatch slid closed. The seats locked.

  “Destination?” asked the car.

  Jessica said, “Sanctuary.”

  The mazecar surged into fluid motion.

  As the beetle rushed, Logan’s thoughts rushed with it. Sanctuary. It seemed too easy; you got into a mazecar and said a word and the obedient piece of machinery carried you—where?

  And the girl, Jessica? How would he deal with her?

  The car slowed, hissed to a stop. The hatch opened.

  Jessica didn’t move. “They can change the color of a man’s eyes but they can’t change the man inside. You’re not my brother.”

  “He’s dead,” Logan told her.

  The girl’s mouth tightened. “You killed him.”

  “No—but I saw him die. He gave me his key. He—wanted me to have it.” For a moment her face was still; then she began to sob quietly.

  What do you say? How do you say I’m sorry? A Sandman doesn’t feel sorry. He does what he has to.

  “Look,” he said. “Your brother’s dead and we’re alive. And if we want to stay alive we’ll have to keep moving. It’s just that simple.”

  “Exit, please,” said the car.

  They stepped out and the machine whipped away.

  The maze platform was lifeless. Dusty yellow sunlight speared down from a jagged hole in the tunnel ceiling. Loose metal tiles lay in disordered heaps where they had sloughed from the walls. Exposed masonry jutted through cracked anodized flooring.

  On the rusting section of tunnel wall a weathered poster clung, edges peeling. On it a running silhouette was overprinted with harsh letters: SHAME. Directly under this a vandal had chalked RUNNERS STINK!

  A bent sign angled over the platform: CATHEDRAL.

  And what now? Logan asked himself. Is this Sanctuary? A shorted-out section of city swarming with renegade cubs.

  “Listen!” Jess warned.

  A distant singing. A faint rising and falling refrain, echoing from an upper level.

  Logan ducked Jess into a wedge of shadow. They waited.

  Faintly: Sandman, Sandman,

  leave my door.

  Don’t come back here

  any more.

  A high, childish treble, coming closer.

  “Cubs!” said Logan. His eyes strained the darkness.

  Louder: Now I lay me

  down to pray.

  Sandman, Sandman,

  stay away…

  A small figure in a tattered blue garment walked into the circle of sun on the platform. A little girl of five. She was dragging something behind her. The child’s face was grimed and hair-tangled; her scabbed legs were thin. She wore no shoes.

  She stopped singing. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I’m Mary-Mary 2.” Logan stepped from the shadow. “What are you doing here?” “Oh, he told me to meet you.”

  “Who did?”

  The little girl’s eyes saucered. “Why, the old, old man, of course.” Jessica gripped the child’s shoulder. “What old, old man?”

  “His hair is black and white, all mixed together,” she told them. “And he has deep places in
his face and he looks so wise. He’s the oldest man in the world.”

  “Ballard!”

  The little girl took a silver key from a torn pocket. “He told me to give you this.” Logan palmed the key. “Do we use it now?”

  “This many,” she said solemnly, raising her tiny hands, all ten fingers spread. In the center of her right palm a yellow flower glowed softly.

  “Ten o’clock,” said Jess.

  Logan checked a wallchron above them. “Twelve minutes.”

  Jessica looked deeply into the waif’s eyes. “Where do you live, Mary-Mary?”

  She smiled. “Here,” she said.

  “Why aren’t you in a nursery?”

  “I’m very smart,” said Mary-Mary.

  “But don’t you get hungry?” “You can catch things to eat.”

  She opened the frayed cloth bag at her feet and proudly held out an old-fashioned rat trap. Jessica paled.

  “I never go upstairs,” continued Mary-Mary. “The bad people are there and they chase you. Goodbye now! You’re a nice old lady.”

  The child looked disdainfully at Logan and walked off into the tunnels. “I don’t think she likes me,” he said.

  “She shouldn’t be here,” said Jess. “Alone in a place like this. She should be in a nursery with other children.”

  “She seems to be self-sufficient.” “A nursery would protect her.” “As it protected you?”

  “Of course. No child under seven belongs on her own. I was happy in the nursery.” Jess sat down on the platform edge with Logan. “No, no I wasn’t happy.” Her voice trembled. “I accepted everything then, without questioning but I was never happy there.”

  Logan let the girl talk; he wanted to know more about her, wanted to understand her.

  “Why should every child be taken from its parents at birth? Why should a brother and sister be separated for seven years?” She studied Logan’s face. “When did you begin to doubt, to question Sleep? I’d like to know.”

  “I can’t recall just when. I’d heard the stories, of course.”

  “Of Ballard?”

  “Yes. And the rest of it.”

  “About the Sanctuary line. Oh, how I wanted to believe those stories when I first heard them as a little girl.” Her eyes grew hard again. “Do you ever wonder what your mother was like, who she was, what she felt, how she looked? Do you think she’d be ashamed of what you’ve become?”