“Neither do I,” the faceless man said.
“It's a lovely thought, though,” Richard said. “No more time in the cold tanks. I dread it more each time he sends us back to those things.”
“At least you haven't been temporarily transformed into a monster!” the faceless man said. “Will you look at me? Just look at me!”
“But as you said,” Galing reminded him, “it's only temporary.”
“You think that makes it any more fun for me?” the faceless man asked.
“We know it isn't fun,” Richard said impatiently. “It isn't fun for any of us. You aren't the only one who's suffering, you know.”
Galing said: “Maybe he'll choose me for the faceless part next time around.”
“You?” the faceless man said sullenly. “Hardly. You're a major figure in this whole affair. You're one of the primary symbols that his psyche can't do without. Not have Henry Galing in one of his charades? Hell, that would be tantamount to not giving himself a role!”
Lying in the dead leaves, his face pressed to the ground, a cloak of shadows pulled across him, Joel was astonished at what they were saying. Did they mean that he was the father of these lies, the master of the illusions? Preposterous! It could only be one more of their tricks. They were talking for his benefit, hoping to draw him out. If he stood up now, thinking he was the master, they'd have him back in the mansion in another illusion within minutes.
“Come on,” Galing said. “We've got to find him. We've got to see what he's learned and figure out how to remedy the situation.”
“I know what to do,” the faceless man said.
“You do, eh?”
“Stop the charade right now.”
“Too easy,” Richard said.
“Now and then, I like things easy.”
“Richard's right,” Galing said. “Besides, he wouldn't like it if we gave up now.”
“Why wouldn't he?” the faceless man asked.
“You know him as well as I do.”
“Sure, sure. But he must be ready to crack up. He must be nearly insane with doubt, confusion…”
Galing sighed and spat again. “Of course he is. Cracking up. Nearly insane. Desperate. And that is precisely what he wants to be, Brian.”
So the faceless man had a name. Brian. It seemed funny that a monster should be given such an ordinary name.
“But it's all falling apart, Henry!” Brian said.
“Then let's see if we can put it back together again, at least for a little while.”
“Won't work.”
“We have to try.”
“Henry's right,” Richard said.
The specter sighed. “Yes, I suppose he is.”
“Or it's back to the cold tanks,” Richard said.
They pushed through the dense underbrush and disappeared along the narrow woodland path.
When he was sure they'd had time to reach the fake street and to begin their search in that direction, Joel got to his feet. He hurried across the lawn, paused at the kitchen door to be sure the room was empty, then went into the house.
He stood with his back to the wall immediately inside the door, listening intently for movement in the house. But there was none.
Keeping close to the wall where his back was protected, he went to the cellar door, opened it, and descended the steps to have a look at the nutrient tanks. The bodies still floated there; Galing had called up none of the reserves, except for the faceless man.
He went up to the kitchen again.
He listened.
Silence.
He went to get Allison.
XIX
“ Allison!"____
She mumbled, stirred.
“Allison, wake up!”
Wrestling sleepily with the covers, she finally rolled over and blinked at him. She yawned. “Oh, hello, darling…” As she got a good look at him, some of the sleepiness faded from her face. “You're dressed.”
“You've got to get dressed too.”
“Where are you going?”
“I've been there,” he said.
She closed her eyes and yawned again, stretched her slender arms. “You're not getting through.”
“I've been to the street where we had the accident,” he said impatiently. “And farther.”
Suddenly concerned, she sat up and threw back the sheets. Her bare breasts were cast in shadow but for a single swatch of pale moonlight that emphasized their fullness: one dark nipple rose in snowy light. “What accident?” she asked.
“The fan shuttle, of course.”
She sat on the edge of the bed. Her knees were round, smooth, icy looking in the moonlight. “You were in an accident?”
“We both were.”
“I don't understand.”
“For God's sake—” Then he realized that the shuttle accident had taken place in another reality, another time-place. If she were not a part of the deception, how could she remember it?
“Joel?” Her voice had a tremor in it.
“It's okay,” he said.
“You better lie down,” she said. She stood up and tried to guide him to the bed. “This is probably some after-effect of the sybocylacose.”
“There's no such drug,” he said.
“I wish there weren't,” she said.
He gripped his shoulders. “Allison, the sybocylacose is a lie, though you can't be expected to know that yet. This whole thing is a lie: your Uncle Henry, this house…”
She raised one hand and smoothed down his hair. “Joel, let me get Uncle Henry. And Dr. Harttle. We won't let anything happen to you. We'll take good care—”
Grasping her again, he shook her gently. “Listen to me! Look… I want you to see something.” Before she could object, he hurried her over to the window, held onto her as he threw the bolt and pushed the halves of the window outward.
“What are you doing?” she asked, crossing her arms protectively over her breasts.
He stared at the sky: stars of every magnitude, a soft moon looming like a piece of bad fruit that had been tossed into the air, a scattering of clouds that looked as thin as tissue paper. It was a nice summer night. It seemed very real. He was either going to make a fool of himself — or he was going to give her incontrovertible proof that nothing was as it seemed to be.
Although he was fairly sure he had a shock in store for her, he wouldn't have bet his life on it. He'd learned that nothing was absolutely certain in this place.
“Wait right here,” he said. He got a straight-backed chair and carried it to the window.
“I'm cold,” she said.
“One more minute.”
“Can't you tell me what’s going on?”
“In a minute.”
He stood on the chair and leaned out of the window.
“Joel! You'll fall!”
“I won't,” he said.
He stepped from the chair to the window sill and leaned out even farther, through the upper half of the window, bracing himself with only one hand against the window frame. He reached toward the sky and touched a cloud. Then a star. Another star. He could not touch the moon, for it was too far away, more than forty feet out on the cement ceiling.
He stepped from the sill to the chair, from the chair to the floor. “Your turn,” he said.
“What?”
“Up on the chair.”
“Why?” She stared at him as if he were stark raving mad.
“You'll see in a minute,” he said.
“Joel, I'm nude.”
“No one will see you.”
“I am not going to—”
He encircled her waist with his big hands and lifted her onto the chair. “Up you go,” he said.
“Joel—”
“Quickly, now.”
Reluctantly, she balanced on the window sill.
He climbed onto the chair and held her as she leaned out and raised a hand toward the sky. “Now what?” she asked.
“Stretch a bit.”
&n
bsp; She did, and squealed. “I can touch the stars,” she said. “Joel, look!”
When she held her hand against the ceiling, a star was projected on the back of it.
He helped her back inside. “Now do you see?”
“The sky isn't real!”
“Neither is much else.”
“But it isn't possible—”
“Believe me, love, it is possible. Anything's possible in the Henry Gating Theater.”
“The what?”
“We haven't time to talk about it now.” He turned her around, put one hand against her sleek back, and gently propelled her toward the closet. “Gating might be back at any moment.”
She stopped in front of the closet and hugged herself. “You make him sound like a desperado or something.”
“Something,” Joel said.
“He's just my uncle.”
“He's not your uncle,” Joel said. He closed the window. “That's just another part of his act. Now, you better get dressed. We've got to be going. Time's running out.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Out of the pyramid.”
“None of this is making sense.”
“You felt the sky,” he said. “You know I'm not mad.”
She nodded. “I'll be just a second.”
He stood at the side of the window and watched the lawn as she dressed. There was no movement on it — nor any down by the dark trees. Maybe they'd make it. Just maybe…
“I'm ready,” she said.
He turned around.
She was wearing white slacks, a black blouse, and one leather glove. She raised her right hand and showed him the palm full of tiny hypodermic needles which glittered in the moonlight. “I'm so sorry, darling. I really am.”
“Allison—”
She reached for him.
He backed into the wall.
She touched him firmly on the neck.
“Not you!” he said.
But it was too late. He slid down the wall and rolled on his back at her feet.
XX
After that, it got worse.
He was subjected to a series of illusions more detailed than the first ones had been — although each fell apart faster than the one before it had done.
And now the periods of unconsciousness between the illusions were filled with dreams. The same dream. Over and over again, like a film loop. Each time, he woke before the dream was finished, but each time it progressed farther than it had previously. He was aware that there was some meaning in the dream, some solution to the mystery, and he almost welcomed the darkness between illusions, when he could continue with it.
Strangely, Galing, Richard, Gina, and the faceless man rarely made appearances in these new illusions. They left the whole act to Allison. Always, he started out with a deep affection for the woman, a need and desire to please that went beyond mere love. Always, however, he began to see that he was in another program; he remembered that she had betrayed him and could not be trusted. Always, he remained calm, not angered by her treachery, only saddened by it. And, always, she seemed as distraught as he, eager to have done with this impossible shifting world, this kaleidoscope of realities that formed one colorful pattern after another, as if it were all controlled by a child's whim.
He realized that his continuing love for her could only be sustained if he had enjoyed a long and close relationship with her in the distant past, before he had climbed out of that life support pod. He no longer trusted her. But he loved her, because he had been able to trust her in some other age.
Never, oddly enough, was she named Allison in these new illusions, although she was always the same woman in every particular, even down to the style of her clothes and the way she wore her lustrous black hair.
And the illusions came, kaleidoscopic:
“Well,” she said, leaning over him, her bare breasts tickling his chest, “I'm glad to see you're awake.”
He yawned and sat up, looked around the bridal suite which was costing him a hundred bucks a day. From the flame red wallpaper to the decadently mirrored ceiling it was meant to stir passions. And it stirred his now. He reached for her and pulled her down on top of him.
“Satyr,” she said.
“You know it.”
“Cool yourself, satyr. Breakfast has been sent up. We don't want the eggs to get cold.”
“Better the eggs than me.”
She laughed.
“Beautiful laugh,” he said.
An hour later they had breakfast.
The dawdled over each other throughout the long afternoon, talked very little, made slow and leisurely love. They moved well together, denying themselves completion until completion came in spite of their denials. And the day passed.
When Joel came out of the shower just after sunset and saw that dinner had been delivered while he was bathing, he reached for the room service phone, picked it up, waited for an answer.
Annie was suddenly frightened. “What do you want? We have everything we could need.”
Why was she so anxious on their honeymoon? What was she abruptly frightened about?
“May I help you?” asked a voice on the other end of the line.
Now ill-at-ease himself, he ordered a bottle of wine. Though he could not place it, the telephone voice was unpleasantly familiar. When the bellboy came, Joel had no trouble recognizing the source of his own uneasiness.
“Richard,” he said.
“Relax,” Annie-Allison said.
Richard hadn't brought any wine. He was wearing the hypodermic glove.
“You'll only be put to sleep for a short time, darling.”
“Stay away from me.”
They moved in on him.
“Who are you people?”
“Trust us,” Richard said.
“Relax,” the woman said.
He struck out at Richard. The blow connected — but so did the hypodermic glove.
“Please…” Joel said, slipping into the old dream again, that same dream:
He stood at the doorway of a private bath cubicle on the tenth level of the pyramid. The bath was white and yellow tile, mirrors, a shower stall, commode, and disposal pipe built into the wall. The only person in the cubicle was a raven-haired girl. She was squeezing a blue tablet from a plastic medicine coil. Her hands were trembling, and she was flushed.
“Do you really need that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I wish you wouldn't use it.”
She had it free now.
“If you do all your view duties sedated, you'll need two or three times as many tours to satisfy the psychologists.”
“I don't care.” Even now, her face drawn with fear, she was a stunningly beautiful woman. “I'd simply fall apart if I tried it unsedated.” She swallowed the pill.
He loved her so damned much, and he wished that there were something more for her than this dying world of theirs. A man — or woman, for she surely felt as he did — should be able to give his lover a future. He felt robbed by circumstances, cheated by fate. He was dying inside.
“Better?” he asked.
She waited a moment. Then: “Yes.”
“Good.”
“Let's go.”
“All right, Alicia.”
He woke at the memory of her name. He didn't want to wake up, for he felt that his dream had more reality to it than did Henry Galing's house. Alicia had existed. He'd seen her name on one of those locker doors next to the life support pod chamber on the bottom floor of the building.
An explosion shook the room in which he lay; dust settled down from the stone ceiling. It sifted onto his eyelids and his lips.
He sat up, frightened, his head aching, his heart beating too fast. His mouth was as dry as the dust around him.
Besides him, Allison said: “Another raid.”
“Was I asleep?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I thought the sirens would wake you, but they didn't.”
She was we
aring a dark blouse, dark slacks, no shoes. Her clothes were torn, and a spot of blood stained the collar of her blouse.
Suddenly, a chain of explosions shook them, an endless roar of thunder that made conversation impossible for quite some time. Indeed, it was impossible even to think in that holocaust. The room shook; dust fell; he sat hugging his knees beside her. All he could do was look stupidly around the room, which seemed oddly familiar. The walls and ceiling were constructed from huge blocks of stone, hand mortared. In the center of the floor, a drainage grill was half hidden in shadows. Near the heavy oak door, a candle guttered in a baking pan.
When the bombing ceased, Allison came into his arms. “I can't take much more of this.”
“Do you have any sedatives?”
She looked at him strangely. “Any what?”
“Sedatives.”
“No.”
“What happened to them?”
“I–I used them all.”
“I'll ask Henry to prescribe more for you.”
“Henry who?” she asked. She seemed to be genuinely bewildered. He thought, too, that there was a trace of apprehension behind that bewilderment.
“Your uncle,” he said.
“I don't have an uncle.”
“Sure. Henry Galing.” It was quite odd, Allison not remembering her own uncle…
“I really don't have an Uncle Henry.”
“Allison—”
“My name's Alice, not Allison,” she said. Then she sighed and said: “What the hell.” She patted his cheek. “You aren't keyed in to this one at all, are you?”
“Keyed in?” he asked.
“Well try again,” she said.
As if he had been listening on the other side, Richard opened the oak door and came in. He was wearing the hypodermic glove.
“Don't I know you?” Joel asked.
“I'm the sandman,” Richard said, putting Joel to sleep.
After Alicia took her sedative, they left their small apartment on the tenth level and rode the elevator to the top floor. Neither one of them spoke. This wasn't a time for small talk.
From the elevators, they walked down the corridor to the yellow doors, pushed through those, and went to the pressure hatch which led to the view chamber.
The Long Sleep Page 10