Selected Stories Page 15

  Awakening is difficult, although I don't have the impression of having slept long. There is a half-real memory of an alien, dark sea. I drift through the twilight dream figures, who swirl through my mind, changing shape, fading into darkness when I touch them. Now all is dark around me, or haven't I opened my eyes yet?

  Too difficult to think about it for the moment, I must let reality come slowly, easy, superimposing upon the sleepworlds, as transparent sheets placed upon each other, until they'll mingle and become one.

  My eyes jerk open, and still there is nothing but darkness, but I’m awake, fully awake. My head is throbbing with sudden shock. There is an already fading impression of pain. Somewhere, something has hurt me enough to wake me up in an instant, but I can't tell where. There is only the memory of unexpected, sharp needlepain, and it is disappearing.

  Though there can be nothing to watch, I would like to look around, and then discover that I can't. My eyes won't turn. Frequently, my brain gives the orders: turn, turn LEFT, turn RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, TURN DAMN YOU! It is almost as if I can feel the order running through the nerves to the muscles of my eyeballs, but they don't move at all. What is this? Now I try to close my eyes, but they don't either. Nothing happens at all. Are my eyes really open? I dimly remember having opened them, but now I can't be sure anymore.

  I raise my right hand and bring it to my face to touch my eyes. I feel the muscles move, the arm bending; my fingers spread and come down as a spider descending from her web on a scared fly. But nothing touches my eager face.

  A reasonless horror hovers above me, and slowly drips feelers of fear on my upturned, helpless face. Frantically I move my arms and legs and head, try to sit upright. The orders race as frightened rabbits through the nerve-knots, but the muscles are petrified.

  Then I scream, WHAT IS THIS? The silence stifles my scream, which rises out of an empty throat, is voiced by a tongue which isn't there. I wait, shivering with unknown dread, but physically nothing happens. There is no cold ice on my back, no sweat on my forehead, no wetness in the palms of my hands.

  HELP! HELP ME! But there is no sound, no voice, no responding echo to my fear. So I let it rest. The fear is slowly going over in my brain-fluid, dripping into my cells. I have no voice, and I can't move. I feel my body yet it doesn't accept my commands. My eyes are closed and I can't open them, or else they are open and I can't close them, and everything is in darkness. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME ?

  Now why did I say that? WHO has done what to me, and WHY? Time has no ending, there is only the motionless waiting for something, anything, to happen. The irreality of it all is enormous; I begin to think that this is all an illusion, a nightmare from which I will awake in due time. I have dreamed like this before, I remember, mornings when I dreamed that I stood up, dressed, ate, and went to the office, then returned home, made love to my wife, and went to sleep. Then afterward I awoke again, to restart the day.

  I had just finished that night. It all seemed real also. Then... ARE YOU AWAKE?

  Something else existing, giving reality and the shape of sound to the void of nothingness which shrouds reel Something real at last, something to cling to, to react to.

  YES, YES, I'M AWAKE. I'M AWAKE.

  GOOD.

  No, the voice can't go away, I have to speak to it, hold it. It spoke to me.

  WHAT IS THIS? AM I DREAMING? I AM, AIN'T I? THIS ISN'T REAL? WHERE IS THIS? WHO ARE YOU? WHY CAN'T I SEE YOU?

  YOU ARE AWAKE. YOU ARE REAL. THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS. BUT WHY CAN'T I MOVE? WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?

  STRANGE THAT YOU STILL SHOULD CARE. THINGS HAVE CHANGED FOR YOU. YOU REMEMBER, DON'T YOU?

  REMEMBER? WHAT SHOULD I REMEMBER?

  DON'T YOU REMEMBER THE ROOM? THE PAPER YOU HAD TO SIGN, TO SAVE YOU FROM THE DISTORTION-DOOR?

  Distortion-room... paper... Something starts throbbing in my head, and I want to shut it out, it is hurting me. But I can't stop it, it is as if someone is striking an enormous gong, right inside my brain, and the booming noise echoes within the bone chambers of my skull. Distortion. Distortion. Distortion. The darkness is moving around me, but it isn't as if I were really seeing something. It is almost as if something is turning my eyes as mirrors, making them look inside my head, deep down there, at the distortion-door, where they were going to kill me. Where they kill me. I'm... I'm DEAD. I'M DEAD.

  The gong is striking again, and automatically I count the strokes. One... two... three... four... five... six... seven... SEVEN. At seven o'clock straight, the hands of the clock in the cell with the white walls stopped, and they came to get the man. I am looking down in that cell now, inside my head, watching the man sitting there, knowing what he thought, knowing what he felt.

  He still couldn't believe it. The Great Judge had said it himself, as he stood proudly before him in his metalsheet cloak. Of course the dress wasn't worn for him, but for the millions of bored yet watching eyes of the world, living with their telesets. Then he had known it for weeks, walking and living through them as through a slowed-down movie fragment. The last night through he had lain awake, thinking about it, repeating it to himself, and still he didn't really believe.

  They couldn't just kill him. He was himself, Charles Harkson-8, electro-accountant, and a good one. He earned a good salary, had friends, a three-room flat, two cars, and a wife. No, he hadn't a wife now, had he? The Verdict automatically canceled his four-year marriage. At least, he thought it did, it all seemed so unreal, and there were many things he couldn't remember clearly since the Verdict. She hadn't come to see him anyway. Not that it mattered very much, she'd remarry soon; they had both agreed before that there would be no renewal of their four-year contract.

  Life and death were the only important matters now. He was alive, a thinking existing person. They couldn't just destroy him. Couldn't they? It seemed rather simplistic, yet it was the only reason that he kept on repeating.

  They came for him, four armed policemen in their striking green garments, rattling their keys in unison. A stupid ancient ceremony, with all the locks being photoelectrical and based on the jailer's brain-patterns, but it showed nicely on the teles. He didn't resist them, just went with them, two in front of him, two behind him. It all seemed like a parody of a bad play; small cameras were placed every ten meters, emitting his last walk to the many million silent watchers. The policemen didn't talk, hardly looked at him. As he walked, he listened to their footfalls echoing endlessly through the empty corridors. Then there was a corridor without cameras, ending in a large door, which opened as they approached, and he saw XT.

  The distortion-door. It was as he had seen it in a picture, just a circular open door into darkness, placed at the end of that room. That was where they would put him, and then they'd twist his molecules into new patterns, change him into a mass of blubbering flesh and broken splintering bones. And all the time his mind would stay sane, his brain untouched, but feeling every bit of pain and terror and unable to voice his agonies, till the distortion would reach it also. They were.., they were...

  "You are going to kill me!" he shrieked. The shout seemed to spring from every nerve in his body. It was as if a white wall suddenly collapsed, splintering into a thousand shrieking fragments, and exposing something very definite, very ugly, to him.

  He kept on screaming, his mind a white blanket of horror. The whole world of self-centered time and consciousness seemed to be in that black circular hole. He tried to run, but couldn't move. A numbness had taken over his arms and legs. He just kept on stating and screaming, but there was no sound in the white noise-absorbing world. They dragged him forward. He could see everything, but it triggered no reactions; the stark terror overpowered all his other emotions. There were three men in white spotless jackets, so white that they almost were one with the white walls, so that he could only see their balloon-faces, as grotesque paintings on those walls. There was also a police officer, the yellow cross on his shoulders stating his high rank. No preacher, but then he didn't belong t
o one of the acknowledged Uni-Churches. Hidden out of sight by the opening door, a stretcher stood, with a blanket lying over a still form. His mind's eye imagined the mass of blood and flesh that must be lying under it, and he almost expected to see a red finger crawling slowly from under it. They were all here to kill him, and they didn't even know him. They weren't interested, and neither was the rest of the world. An example had to be set for the tubemacs, so they'd kill him. To them, he was just a puppet. They'd cut his strings, and he'd drop dead.

  "All right," one of the white-cloaked men said. "Just let him here. You can go now."

  The policemen loosened their grip on his arms, and he almost fell, but now the white man held him.

  The big door behind them snapped shut, cutting off the camera eyes.

  "Come on, quick now," the white man said. The words didn't register. Only the other open door was there, looking impartially at him with the black empty socket of a skull. Death. The distortion-door and death, his own personal death. He choked, his eyes stinging with fear, terror crawling over his back and through his brain as a thousand many-legged spiders.

  "Move," the officer said. The gun in his hand now pricked in Charles's back. Slowly he fell from one leg onto the other, walking clumsily. But they didn't lead him to the circular door. Instead, one of the white men closed it. There was a soft hissssssss. The hands of the clock had crawled to seven-ten.

  The officer nodded. "Execution finished," he said. He took a significant look at Charles. "Now you're officially dead, man." He showed the stretcher. "There, under the plastic blanket, lies what is left of a big android-dog who went through the distortion-door, just before they brought you. No one will ever know the difference between it and a human body NOW. No time to spare, let's leave."

  Charles's tongue couldn't form the questions he wanted to ask. It was all happening too quickly; the succeeding emotions drowned his understanding. They took him through a side door he hadn't even noticed, through long corridors to an elevator, and then they went down, and down. They never loosened their grip on him, and he just kept on looking from one to another, searching for a clue on their expressionless faces. They passed through an enormous room, where other white men and many androids were working on machines he had never imagined to exist under the city, and then into a small office, where they put him down in a chair.

  The man in white who had spoken first put a paper in front of him on the small table, and said, "We have taken you away from death, a death which you certainly merited. Our reason is very simple and selfish: we can use you. You are here in department E.T.E. of the government-sponsored Science Development. We are working on a project you could never have even dreamed of, but which is of enormous importance. Your test-patterns before the Verdict have shown you to be an intelligent man, which is exactly what we need as a guinea-pig. You agree on your own free will to subject yourself to this experiment. Sign here."

  It was too much. Action, reaction, superimposing emotion.

  "No," he whispered.

  The officer's voice was a grating sound against his ear. "Remember one thing, my friend. You're dead. You're officially dead. You DON'T EXIST. We don't really need this signature, except that if we succeed, then we can prove that we had use you for it."

  There was a paradox somewhere, it couldn't be legal, because legally he was dead. He couldn't think. "No. I'll only sign when I know more. What are you going to do with me? What kind of experiment? What are my chances of getting through it alive?"

  The officer smiled. His cynicism crawled through the air as cigarette smoke, shaping almost-touchable patterns. "As a matter of fact, you don't have much chance. But does that matter? We have delayed your death by twenty-one minutes now. We'll just have to make a short trip backward in time."

  Something small, hard, and very cold was pressed against Charles's neck. It seemed to be enormous in proportions, although he knew it was only the size of a pinhead.

  CLIC, CLIC! Thundering through his ear channels, echoing in his brain. He pictured the microscoping poison needle, waiting in the mouth of the gun, the tail of a scorpion, already stretching out for the kill.

  The voice was cold, it dropped ice lakes as it slithered through his mind as a snake.

  "You have six seconds left," it said.

  "You can't do this," he screamed, but only the echo of his shriek ever left his mouth.

  "Five... four..."

  "It's against the law, it's murder, murder, MURDER!"

  "No, YOU are the murderer. I am the executioner. Three left. You're dead, don't forget that. You're already dead Now."

  "But you're not killing me for what I've DONE. I was a victim, they could have put me through Conform with drugs, but they wanted an example against the tubereacs. But you, you're not executing me, you're MURDERING me because I don't want to--"

  "Two seconds."

  "--sign your bloody paper. You can't just destroy me as you..."

  "Oh, but we can, and we will. The time is past. Sign."

  The coldness was all over his body now. With shaking fingers he grasped the ballpoint pen and signed, a spidery crawl all over the paper.

  A sudden sharp pain, he hadn't the time to understand what was happening. A black wing overshadowed him as he fell forward, and the ground opened a dark, toothless mouth which swallowed him into a pit of darkness.

  YES, I REMEMBER NOW. And I do remember, all of it, the smell of fear, the weakness, and the biting pain in my neck. I know that the man I watched is me. No, was me, because it's all past.

  I REMEMBER, I say, BUT WHAT HAPPENED WITH ME? WE GAVE YOU AN INJECTION, the voice out of nowhere says, THEN WE TOOK YOUR BODY AWAY AND CUT IT APART. WE TOOK OUT YOUR BRAIN AND STUCK A THOUSAND MICROSCOPIC NEEDLES IN IT. AND NOW YOU'RE ON YOUR WAY.

  ON MY WAY? MY WAY TO WHERE? I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING. YOU MUST EXPLAIN OR I'LL GO MAD HERE. WHERE AM I? WHY CAN'T I MOVE? AND WHERE ARE YOU?

  WE ARE QUITE A DISTANCE AWAY FROM YOU. WHAT YOU ARE HEARING ARE NO WORDS IN THE REAL SENSE OF IT. OUR WORDS ARE SPOKEN INTO A TRANSMITTER, WHO CHANGES THEM INTO CODED IMPULSES. YOU RECEIVE THEM WITH RADAR-EARS, CONNECTED WITH YOUR OWN TRANSMITTER, WHO PASSES THEM ON TO THE HEARING CENTER OF YOUR BRAIN, WHERE THEY ARE INTERPRETED AS RECOGNIZABLE SOUNDS, DUE TO A FEW THINGS WE PUT IN THERE. BUT I SPEAK TO YOU, AND YOU HEAR ME!

  THAT IS ONLY THE SAME PROCESS BUT IN REVERSAL. YOU DON'T SPEAK. YOU CAN'T SPEAK. THERE'S NOTHING LEFT FOR YOU TO SPEAK WITH. YOU ARE THINKING THE WORDS, IMAGINING YOURSELF SPEAKING THEM, WHICH MAKES THE CORRECT CONTACT WITH THE TRANSMITTER IN THE NEEDLE. OUR RADARS RECEIVE THE IMPULSES YOU'RE SENDING, AND PASS THEM ON TO OUR TRANSMITTER, WHO TRANSLATES THE SYMBOLS YOU'RE SENDING. BUT WHERE? WHERE AM I?

  NOT EXACTLY “WHERE”. YOU ARE A PHOTON-NEEDLESHIP, AND HAVE JUST LEFT THE CALCULATED ORBIT AROUND THE MOON. YOU'RE LEAVING US, GOING OUT, QUICKER AND QUICKER EVERY MILLISECOND.

  LEAVING? OUT? TO WHERE? WHY?

  I think the right words, triggering the electrical contacts that operate the sound modulators. I speak-think my questions toward the faraway underground machines, around which the men in white are sitting. It is crazy! They're mad, or else I'm sick and having hallucinations. There must be a way out of this insanity. Let's try it by acting logically.

  WHAT'S THE SENSE OF THIS? WHY SEND ME? AND WHERE TO? They couldn't fool him, those madmen. Everybody knew that the space projects had been stopped, and that all the money for government projects had been channeled into Medic Center for mass production of the Controlled Breeding Wombs. Oh no, they wouldn't fool HIM with their lunatic talk.

  WE WILL TRY TO EXPLAIN THE ESSENTIALS. AS YOU KNOW, BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALLY BANNED THE SPACE PROJECTS, MANNED SHIPS HAD BEEN SENT TO MARS AND VENUS, AS DID OUR FRIENDS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GLOBE. THREE YEARS AGO, THE FIRST SHIP WAS SENT BEYOND THE ORBIT OF VENUS, TOWARD MERCURY. SOMETHING BROKE DOWN IN THE MACHINERY, AND THE SHIP HURLED ITSELF INTO THE SUN. THAT WAS WHAT THE PUBLIC WAS TOLD. NO ONE EVER LEARNED THAT IT WASN'T THE SHIP WHICH HAD FAILED,
BUT THE PILOT. A MAN POSSESSING IRON NERVES AND COMPLETE CONTROL OVER HIS MIND AND BODY. A HIGHLY SPECIALIZED ASTRONAUT WHO HAD BEEN TRAINED TWO YEARS EXCLUSIVELY FOR THIS TRIP, NOT COUNTING HIS GENERAL TRAINING AS AN ASTRONAUT. STILL, SOMETHING HAPPENED TO HIM, ENOUGH TO SHATTER THAT BRILLIANT MIND. RAVING AS A MANIAC, HE CHANGED THE SHIP'S COURSE. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT CHANGED HIM, OR FROM WHERE IT CAME, WE SENT TWO SHIPS WITH ROBOTS, AND THEY RETURNED SAFELY. WE TRIED ANOTHER MANNED SHIP, AND THE PILOT KILLED HIMSELF. THE SHIP WAS LOST. THAT WAS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT HAD A FEW MEETINGS WITH POLITICIANS FROM THE OTHER SIDE, KNOWING THAT THEY HAD BEEN EXPERIMENTING ALONG THE SAME LINES. RESULTS WERE NEARLY IDENTICAL, THOUGH THEY REFUSED TO ADMIT DEFEAT OPENLY. THEN THE SPACE PROJECTS WERE STOPPED OFFICIALLY, AND E.T.A. WERE FOUNDED, TO FIND A WAY TO GET A MAN CLOSE TO MERCURY AND SAFELY BACK. THAT'S WHERE YOU COME IN. SOMETHING INFLUENCED THE MINDS AND/OR THE BODIES OF THOSE ASTRONAUTS. IT WON'T BE ABLE TO DO THIS WITH YOU. WE HAVE SENT SOMEBODY WITHOUT A BODY, AND WITH A MIND WE CAN READ AS AN OPEN BOOK. YOU ARE, PRACTICALLY SPEAKING, A PURE MIND, A BRAIN CONNECTED TO A COMPUTER FED BY SYNTHETIC FLUIDS. YOUR TONGUE IS AN ELECTRONICAL CONTACT, YOUR EARS ARE RADARS. YOUR VEINS ARE ELECTRIC CABLES, YOUR FINGERS ARE DIAL NEEDLES. YOU ARE THE PERFECTED CYBORG, A MACHINE CONTROLLED BY A HUMAN BRAIN. YOU are IN FACT THE NEEDLE-SHIP.

  I want to laugh. They say I have no mouth, yet I feel my lips with my tongue, I feel the hardness of my teeth. I try to move, and though it doesn't work, still I know that I have hands and feet.

  YOU'RE ALL INSANE DOWN THERE OR WHEREVER YOU ARE REALLY. THIS IS A JOKE, A STUPID EXPERIMENT TO TEST MY REACTIONS, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. I CAN FEEL MY FINGERS MOVE AND SPREAD. I CAN HEAR MY HEART BEAT IN MY CHEST. I CAN FEEL I'M... I stop, and something very cold comes over me. I am not breathing. In fact I haven't taken a breath since I woke up.