by Anthology
"Certainly," Lima said. "But, first, let me explain about my cure. There is some mental unpleasantness involved which you may consider worse than the ailment."
"I doubt that. I can't imagine anything worse than this agony."
"Your mind will be placed under my control and led through a dream sequence. I will follow a logical progression of events, using your actual past as background. While you are under my control, your experiences will be far from pleasant. I will allow your mind to follow its own anticipated course of events, influencing your thoughts only slightly--directing them into as unpleasant channels as possible. In fact, to make the cure certain, at least the culmination must be quite devastating. Do you agree to undergo such rigorous mental punishment?"
"But why do I have to?" Bennett asked, astonished and worried.
"That pattern will act in the manner of a counter-irritant. Your mind is like a spoiled child, rejecting anticipated unpleasantness. Under my influence it is subjected to possible alternative experiences, which are so much worse than the one it originally feared that it will gratefully accept the lesser evil."
"That sounds reasonable," Bennett agreed. "When could we begin this treatment?"
"Immediately, if you are willing."
"I see no reason for waiting."
"Then, if you are ready," Lima told him, "lie on this couch. Keep your eyes on mine." She spoke slowly, evenly. "Remember that you are doing this of your own free will, that you trust me. I am your friend and would do you no harm."
Her voice droned on as Bennett looked into her eyes. They merged until they became one large, placid pool of restfulness, and he found himself drawn into them.
He sank peacefully, quietly--completely.
* * * * *
When the telephone rang, Bennett knew it was the district attorney returning his call, and that the die was cast. Until this ugly business was brought to a conclusion, his life would be in constant danger.
"Leroy Bennett speaking," he said. "I have had collected some information that I think will be of very great interest to your office."
"Information about what?" the voice at the other end asked briskly.
"I have proof that John Tournay is responsible for the death of two men, in an action involving criminal collusion."
"If what you say is true, I will be glad to see your evidence," the district attorney said. "Could you deliver it in person? There may be some questions I would like to ask you about it."
"Certainly," Bennett replied. "When would be the most convenient time?"
"Later in the day. I have a case going on. How would four-thirty this afternoon suit you?"
"That would be fine."
The rest of the day dragged slowly. At four o'clock Bennett left his office and took the elevator to the ground floor. Under his arm he clutched the briefcase which might spell death for him.
A moment after he left his office building, he knew he had made a mistake--a fatal one!
Idly, at first, his mind's eye watched the driver of a long gray sedan, parked at the curb, start up its motor as he approached. The car pulled away from the curb when he came alongside it.
Through an open rear window, Bennett saw a man with a dark, brooding face--with black eyebrows that joined over the bridge of the nose--glowering at him. At the same instant he saw the blunt nose of an automatic resting on the lowered glass of the window, just below the chin of the frowning man.
Incredibly, even as he realized that he was about to die, Bennett's first thought was not one of fear, but rather that this dark man was the other person he had seen in his hallucinations of the city of Thone!
Then, as one part of his mind drew back in terror at what it knew was about to happen, another part wondered at the mystery of Thone and the people in it. Where did that hallucination fit in this mist of life which was about to end?
He felt three hard, solid blows punch shockingly into his body. There was pain, but greater than that was the terror that whipped his panicked mind.
"Lima," Bennett whispered with his last stark thought as he dropped to his knees.
He groped for the sidewalk with one hand, to steady himself, and never reached it.
* * * * *
"It's over now," Bennett heard the mystic say. "Please try to relax."
He found himself fighting with awful exertion to raise himself from the sidewalk--which had turned into a couch. His clothes clung to him with a clammy wetness that chilled him.
He flung his arms out in a frantic gesture that knocked a lamp from an end-table and sent it crashing to the floor.
Not until then did he feel the mystic's firmly gentle hands on his shoulders, urging him down, and know that he was not actually dying. He lay back for a moment, gasping great gulps of welcome air into his lungs.
"I think you will be all right now," Lima said.
"You were right when you said the experience would not be pleasant," Bennett said, still battling for breath. "I hope the results will be worth it."
"I believe you will find that they are," Lima told him reassuringly. "Also, it can be of assistance to you in still another way. The sequence your dream followed--being a natural, perhaps even a probable, aftermath of your past decisions and movements--could actually happen. Therefore it would be wise to avoid such decisions in real life."
* * * * *
At the end of two weeks, Bennett had collected all the information he needed on Tournay's illegal activities. The investigator he hired was very thorough, and unearthed several other incriminating schemes in Tournay's past. With the evidence he had on hand, Bennett was certain that Tournay would be convicted in any court.
This time he intended to evade the fate he had suffered in the dream by acting differently. He hired a shrewd lawyer--the best obtainable--had him draw up the evidence in legal form, and presented it to the district attorney, with the demand for Tournay's immediate arrest. He knew that immediate action would be his best protection.
That evening, when he left his office building, he felt the peace of a man whose task has been well done.
It took almost a full second before the sight of the long gray car jerked his thoughts from their pleasant introspection and back to dread reality. Tournay's black-browed face leered at him as it had in the dream and he felt his body tense as it waited for the pistol slugs to strike.
His mind scurried in its trap within his head and, strangely, it turned to the mystic for help.
"Lima!" he called desperately.
* * * * *
Again Bennett felt himself struggling with that awful exertion to drag his body from the couch on which it lay.
"It's all over now," he heard Lima say.
He sat up. "What happened?"
"This will be hard to believe," Lima said, "and I will not try to prove it to you, but it is true. The mind has many powers which cannot even be imagined by anyone who has not lived with those powers as I have. When you called me, your mind attuned itself with mine, and its need and its demand were so powerful that together we turned time backward. You are now back in my dressing room, and it is the exact time at which you originally came out of your dream."
"That's impossible!" Bennett protested.
"Nevertheless, it happened. I only ask you to keep in mind one thing. Someday, when your mind has been made more facile, you will understand how I am able to do this. It will even appear logical to you. Now, however, the only thing I can tell you is believe it!"
* * * * *
Bennett had no intention of muffing this second chance. After he had collected the information about Tournay's criminal activities, he also dug into his past for a man who had cause to hate the contractor. He found the man he sought, a man as ruthless and unscrupulous as Tournay himself, one who could fight him on his own ground.
Roger Clarkson had been the controller of a string of bookie joints, before he had been framed by Tournay, and convicted, to serve ten years in prison.
Clarkson had been released fro
m prison six days before. He found that Tournay had gained control of his former criminal empire. Everyone, including Tournay, knew that the only thing preventing Clarkson from taking revenge was the opportunity.
Bennett sent his information to Clarkson and sat back to await the results. That evening, as he was about to leave his office building, some inner caution warned him to take no chances. He stepped cautiously out into the street, looked both ways for the gray sedan, and saw that the street was empty, before he walked to the corner.
He arrived there just in time to meet the long gray sedan as it drove up.
* * * * *
Once more he fought the awful exertion on the mystic's couch. This time he came out of the blackness with his mind clear. "You've saved me again," he said to Lima. "Have you turned time backward again?"
"Yes," she replied. "But I have given you all the help I can. The next attempt you make, you will have nothing on which to lean except your own strength."
"But why do I always arrive at the point where I'm being shot by Tournay, regardless of what course I choose? Is there no way I can beat him?"
"If you believe in fate as strongly as I do, you will accept that conclusion as inevitable. The long gray sedan is the symbol of your death. You cannot avoid it--at least not as long as you persist in passive action."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Just this. You wish to see Tournay punished--your sense of justice demands it. But each time you try to have someone else administer that punishment. It appears to me that the only possibility of your breaking this fateful progression of events is for you to administer the punishment yourself. You probably realize the danger of trying that. But I can't see where you have any other choice."
"In other words, you feel that the only chance I have of preventing Tournay from killing me--is to kill him first?"
"Yes," Lima said. "Are you strong and hard enough to do it?"
Bennett thought for only a brief moment before he nodded. "I'm desperate enough, at any rate."
This time he did not leave immediately. He had to find out something first. He put his arms around Lima's shoulders and drew her toward him. She put her face up and he kissed her waiting lips. They were sweet and, if she did not return the ardor of his kiss, he did not notice it.
* * * * *
"Mr. Tournay is not in," the girl at the desk told Bennett. "You might try his home."
At a pay-booth in the lobby, Bennett called Tournay's home. The voice that answered was that of a tired woman, one who has given up hope. "Mr. Tournay called me a short time ago and said that he would be in the office of a Mr. Leroy Bennett, in the Lowry building, if anyone called," the tired voice said.
Bennett hung up and caught a cab. His quarry had walked into an ideal place for their meeting. For better or for worse, he would soon bring this conflict to an end.
In his office, Bennett found that Tournay had been there and gone. He had left a message: "Tell Mr. Bennett that Lima sent me!"
So that was it--Lima had used Bennett as a dupe! He could not figure out her purpose, but he knew that he could never trust her again. She had been against him from the first. Perhaps even she, rather than Tournay, was the prime menace. He decided that he must kill them both, before they had the chance to kill him. Touching the small flat pistol snuggling in its shoulder holster, he knew the pursuit must continue immediately.
He rode the elevator to the ground floor, and he felt his mind working with a clarity and a precision which he had seldom experienced before. This time he knew he would win.
Shrewdly, before leaving the building, Bennett looked out through the glass pane in the door first. He waited only a moment before he saw the long gray sedan as he had expected. They would not trap him again. Ducking back, he walked rapidly toward a side exit.
Night had fallen by the time he reached the carnival building. He did not ring the bell. Instead, he walked to the rear, climbed the stairs of a fire-escape, and softly opened the window of a bedroom.
He stepped inside just as softly and stood listening for breathing. He heard none. This was probably too early for Lima to be in bed.
The bedroom door was open. Bennett could see a light coming from another part of the apartment--probably the living room. He paused to steel himself for what he must do. The time had come when he would have to be savagely ruthless.
He found Lima sitting on a couch, reading a book. He suspected that she still had some control over his mind and he had no intention of letting her influence him. She must be killed before she could read his intention.
"It didn't work." Bennett spoke just loudly enough to startle Lima into raising her head.
As she looked up, he shot her squarely between the eyes.
In an agony of frustration, Bennett saw the flesh of her forehead remain clear and undisturbed. He knew he could not miss at this range, yet she was unhurt. He lowered his sights and shot at the white neck beneath the fair head. She still sat there, returning his gaze, unperturbed, unmarked by the bullets.
He pumped the four remaining bullets into her body. The only part of her that moved was her lips.
"It's no use, Leroy," she said. "Haven't you guessed? You are still in your dream. You can't kill me there."
Suddenly the implication struck him with its awful simplicity.
"Good God!" His voice rose. "Do you mean I've never been out of my dream?" He hesitated while the thought sank in. "My remembrance of coming out of it was only part of the dream itself," he murmured. "That was why you were able to turn time backward at will."
A cold calmness returned to him.
"Tell me," he said, "am I still in the dream?"
"Yes," Lima replied.
"Then I demand that you free me now!"
"As you wish," Lima said sadly. "And may God help you."
Bennett wrenched his body from the couch on which it lay and struggled to his feet. Though the dream had seemed real enough, he could look back on it now and see it as any other dream.
He breathed easier, and then stopped abruptly when he heard a voice behind him say, "You are still a dead man!"
Bennett whirled and found himself facing Tournay. And Tournay held a pistol aimed at his heart.
Bennett turned desperately back to Lima. His lips formed her name, but the sound died almost before it was uttered. This time, he saw, she would not help him. Her features had hardened and no mercy or compassion registered on them.
"There is no escape," she said.
A fleeting thought went through his mind of springing at Tournay and trying to reach him before the gun could be fired. But one glance at Tournay's face made him realize how futile--and fatal--that would be.
Tournay's finger tightened on the trigger of his gun and Bennett thought ahead in despair to what was to come. One thing he knew: He did not want to die! Was there no way out?
The answer came like a cry of relief. There was a way--Thone! The city of his enigma. Tournay and Lima could not harm him there.
* * * * *
For just an instant, Bennett's vision blurred. Time paused, and the next moment he knew he had returned to Thone. The sounds of the alien city floated up to him and he stirred.
He grasped the sides of his coffinlike bed with fingers that had lost their sense of touch. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and looked about him. On one side stood Lima, though now her features were not those of the implacable, merciless mystic, but rather those of a woman in love.
She smiled happily and said, "At last you have returned."
Bennett strove to move his tongue and lips to ask questions, but they refused, as though numbed by long inaction. He turned to his other side and gazed questioningly at the replica of Tournay who stood there.
Tournay's image spoke. "We had quite a time bringing you back, Sire. But now it has been accomplished--for good."
Striving to move his throat muscles, Bennett finally forced a sound, and then words, through his lips.
"Tell me
," he pleaded. "Who are you? And, more important, who am I?"
He turned to Lima for an answer, realizing that now she would help him if anyone would.
"Doctor Tournay will explain it to you," Lima replied, indicating the dark man.
Imploringly, Bennett turned back to face Tournay.
"I see that very little of your memory has returned yet," Tournay said. "In a short while, everything--all your past--will come back to you. Until then, perhaps I had better explain to you who you are. My words will help trigger your returning memory, and speed up the process."
"Please do," Bennett begged.
"You are Benn Ett, Le Roy of the city-state of Thone, in the year 4526 A. D. Six months ago, the strain of governing the city began to undermine your health. Acting under my advice, you decided to take a somno-rest cure.
"This rest cure," the doctor continued, "is quite standard practice in our time. We had a little difficulty bringing you out of it at the end of six months. Evidently your somno-existence must have been very pleasant."
"Do you mean that the existence I remember was merely an induced figment of my imagination?"
"Yes. You see, the best rest that can be given a mind is to give it not sleep, but pleasant work. Therefore, under my manipulation, you were given a pseudo-existence in a past era of history. You were led to conceive yourself as occupying a position, which, after close study, I deduced would be the most suitable and relaxing for you."
"But if that is true, why did my dream have to end so unpleasantly--I might say, so nearly fatally?" Bennett demanded.
"The more successful I am in choosing a pleasant existence for a patient in the somno, the more difficult it is to bring him out of it," the doctor replied. "Your unconscious mind, realizing how happy you were in your simulated existence, and how it would have to return to the rigor and stress which unnerved it before, fought with all its strength to remain where the somno had placed it.
"The usual practice in bringing a patient back to reality is for the doctor to enter the dream and convince him, by whatever means may be necessary, to return. Sometimes, however, the patient is so firmly tied to his somno-existence that drastic measures must be used. This is usually done by means of making the somno-existence so anxiety-producing that the patient is glad to return.