by John Burke
He was curious about the place. Envious, too, of the folks who had settled in here. He wouldn’t mind a couple of rooms to himself way up at the top where those lights were gleaming, away from the congestion of the city. For him the city was a pulsing evil, something that could never be entirely shut out. Always there was the mental congestion, the ceaseless subconscious roar of several million minds, as well as the thunder of traffic. Out here he might find tranquility.
The doors opened for him. He entered, and they closed smoothly—almost obsequiously, you would have said—behind him.
He stared round the large hall. No boy came hustling forward, no bells shrilled. But suddenly a light winked to attract his attention. “Reception,” said a suddenly illuminated sign. “Visitor?” asked a smaller sign over a microphone.
He got the idea. “Mark Jordan to see Mr. and Mrs. Cardew,” he said into the microphone.
Then he waited.
In less than a minute, Christopher Cardew emerged from a lift and came over to him, smiling awkwardly.
He said: “Thought I’d come down to make you welcome.”
Queer. Mark found himself bristling. Something wrong. The probing, mind-searching faculty that he had deliberately dropped into abeyance flickered warningly awake.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” he said, with a foolish grin.
“I thought you’d like it.”
Mark was not trying to needle into his friend’s mind. He didn’t have to try; something came out right away. Chris had forgotten about this invitation. And now that Mark was here, Chris was sorry that the invitation had been issued.
Well, all right, Mark thought. All right, if that’s the way it is....
He had a blurred vision of the Cardews’ flat, and of their stillness and apathy. He felt himself rejected…and felt something beyond that rejection. It was frightening. It was too big to grasp for the moment, and as it took shape in his mind he knew that he had to get out of here.
He turned for the door.
“You’re not going, Mark?”
There was swift alarm in Christopher’s voice. His listlessness cracked and splintered as something thrust up from beneath it—something that was not Christopher at all.
Now Mark was moving—he was throwing himself at those doors through which he had come so smoothly and easily.
Not so easy to get out of them again. They were tightly shut, firm against his onslaught. And all about him he felt the alarm being given, the warning shouted silently throughout the building.
Someone came out of a door at the far side. A lift sighed down close to him, and there were more men coming at him. They had strangely blank faces, but their clutching hands were purposeful.
He did not hesitate. Instinctively he snatched up a statuette that had been curving graciously on a slim pedestal. It went through the glass of the door twice, three times, and then again.
He went through. His right hand was gashed, and cloth was torn from his shoulder.
As he sprinted away from the entrance, a heavy chair shattered on the ground a few feet away from him. He kept going, weaving as he ran. At any moment there might be shooting. After what he had sensed in there, and after his unavoidable betrayal of what had surged into his mind, there would be no mercy shown to him. If he could be stopped, he would be stopped.
But he made it. He was too far for them—or it?—to hold him back now. The monorail station was right ahead.
He didn’t hang about, didn’t look back. He got the first car headed into the city, and sat in it breathing hard and wondering if his boss would believe the report he was going to hand in.
Superintendent Windsor didn’t believe it. He had ribbed Mark Jordan many times before about the troubles of a telepath, but this time he was pompous and admonitory about that eccentric faculty.
“You don’t want to get ideas,” he said. “Your imagination can run away with you just the same as anybody else’s—”
“This wasn’t imagination. I got it all—quite clear.”
“You’re overworked. Reckon I’ve been pushing you too hard lately.”
“I tell you there’s an incredible menace brewing up,” said Mark, desperately. “This is what we’ve feared and joked about and argued about for years. The machine that begins to think, to have a personality of its own—and what makes it worse is that it’s using the human beings. It’s already master of them. I tell you—”
“Your mind’s all cluttered up,” said the superintendent, with infuriating sympathy. “Can’t say I blame you. But you don’t seriously expect me to…well, to call out the riot squad, or try to arrest a house, do you?”
Mark’s shoulders slumped. “No,” he said, wearily. “I don’t expect you to do that. I suppose I don’t expect you to do anything. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Superintendent Windsor suggested a holiday. He was in an unusually amenable mood—but not amenable enough to take action on Mark’s daytime nightmare.
“How long,” asked Mark, on a sudden thought, “before the other houses are ready—the ones on the same design as this?”
“Quit worrying, will you?”
“When?” Mark persisted.
Windsor didn’t know and didn’t intend to go to the trouble of finding out. Mark had to make enquiries on his own from the Secretary of the Metropolitan Housing Authority. He learned that the building was almost completed and that the lucky tenants would be moving in next week.
He didn’t like it. Somebody would have to be made to listen to him, before anything irreparable happened.
Before he could decide who to approach, Windsor insisted that he took a holiday. No arguments. A holiday. “And get right away from the city and have a good time.”
Mark could not get out of the city. He felt that he must not leave. He was at home ten days later when an urgent message arrived for him from the superintendent.
* * * *
“All right,” said Windsor. “Let’s hear it. Let’s hear the whole crazy story, just the way you told it to me.”
Mark glanced quickly round the room, although he was fully awake and his mind had already reached out to make contact as he entered. Someone from the Housing Authority, he noted; Windsor himself and, great heavens, old Morecambe; and a general…
“General Sammons,” Windsor was introducing them, “and this is Mark Jordan, whose report I passed on to you.”
“Yes.” The bright, malicious blue eyes summed him up. “Well, young feller, let’s have it.”
“The house?” said Mark.
“Just that. The house.”
Mark hesitated. But the gravity of their expressions told him that he need hold nothing back. They were not here to pass judgment on him—they had awakened to the menace, something had jarred them into awareness, and it was up to him to tell them just what lay in wait there.
He said: “That house is alive. It is an entity in itself. You might say lots of houses have a personality, according to the people who live in them. But this is more than that. The men who built that place were too good—they built too well. The brain in that house began to think for itself from the moment it began functioning. Why shouldn’t it? Hell, everything was arranged so that it should do just that. How could it help thinking for itself?”
“We have had electronic brains for years,” said the man from the Housing Authority stiffly, “but it has never been suggested that there was any danger of their acquiring a—a personality.”
“Maybe you need human beings to act as…well, as batteries,” said Mark. “I don’t know. I haven’t worked it out yet. What I do know is that the tenants of that building belong to the building. By pooling all their mental resources, the building has made them part of itself. The human beings there are now merely extensions of the sentient creature in which they live.”
The general looked as though he would have liked to snap out something derisive. But he remained silent, tugging at his ginger moustache. It was Morecambe, the Old Man himse
lf, who glared at his subordinate and said:
“Well? And what are we going to do about it?”
“When the people come out of the building,” suggested Mark, “keep ’em out. Don’t let ’em get back in again. It might help. The psychic energy the building has stored up—because that’s what ít undoubtedly is—will dissipate, or prove powerless without the men and women there.”
Superintendent Windsor pouted like a baby. He said: “Very nice. But the folks don’t come out any more.”
“They have to come out to work,” protested Mark.
“They don’t. Not any more. They’re just sitting tight.”
“Oh,” said Mark.
“We sent Cartwright in two days ago to investigate a kidnapping—”
“A kidnapping?”
“One of our leading scientists,” interposed the general, allowing himself a gentle sneer at the word that he and his fellow officers always associated with disorder and eccentricity, “let himself be lured inside by a young technician he knew—feller called Darby—and he just didn’t come out again. He was due at an important meeting. Never turned up.”
“We discovered,” Windsor went on, “that nobody at all was coming out of the place. When we checked up, we found that none of them were turning up at their jobs. Cartwright went in to investigate—and he didn’t come out, either.”
“But—”
“We sent a riot squad round there. They couldn’t get in. The glass in the doors and windows stood up to their guns—”
“That’s something it’s learned since I was there,” muttered Mark.
“They couldn’t fight their way in,” said Windsor, going red with impotent fury at the memory. “The place was...damn it, it was like a fortress. What the blazes is going on?”
They looked at one another. Then all the rest of them turned and concentrated on Mark. He felt the swirling confusion of their baffled thoughts; and then thrust them out of the way and delved into his memories and impressions of that visit he had made to the great building.
Slowly he said: “It’s getting ready for something. I’m inclined to think it’s gathering strength, testing its powers. Learning. You’d better act fast, before it gets really organised.”
The general sat back, jerking upright in his chair. “Shell the place,” he said.
“No,” cried the man from the Housing Authority. “Our wonderful new project…and, anyway, how wonderful if we can find out just how that brain has come to work like this. If we could get control of it—”
“Get rid of it,” growled the general.
“You’ve got to get the inhabitants out first,” said Mark. “Maybe if you can entice them away from the building, the place will lose its psychic potential.”
A wrangle began all about him. Spoken words clashed and conflicted discordantly with the jumble of thoughts and emotions his mind was receiving. He withdrew into cool, analytical contemplation.
“Drop a bomb on it….”
“Infiltration....”
“Tear gas…electronic stunners….”
“There’ll be hell to pay if we don’t get a move on....”
Mark said, abruptly: “Maybe this’ll work.”
The clamour was silenced. They looked hopefully at him.
“It had better be good,” said Morecambe, gruffly.
The general nodded and looked ferocious.
Mark said: “The place isn’t yet properly organised. It cannot—how shall I put it?—separate out its various impulses. Or, anyway, that’s the impression I’ve got. When I panicked and turned to run away, there was not much co-ordination in the attempt to stop me. Instead of sending someone out of a side door to intercept me, or getting a really good barrage ready from the upper windows, there was a general rush. The…the thing…it…sensed my alarm, got alarmed itself, and flung everything at me just anyhow. Like a kid in a fight, lashing out with arms and legs. No science. But”—his voice became urgent—“it won’t be long before it organises its various limbs, antennae, members—call ’em what you like. The mind of that scientist who was drawn in will teach it a lot. You’ve got to hit it now, while it’s still trying to evolve a modus vivendi.”
The general cleared his throat, with the obvious intention of once more advocating immediate annihilation; then he thought better of it, and scowled about him.
Morecambe said: “How?”
“Do I have to do all the thinking?” protested Mark.
“You’re more likely to have a good idea than we are,” said Superintendent Windsor with unaccustomed humility.
Something clicked in Mark’s mind. He asked: “What about the new building—the latest one—are people in it yet?”
“Yes.”
“Any—er—developments?”
Windsor said: “We picked up a messenger on his way from Estate 1 to Estate 2—”
“Then it has learned to use individuals after all! You didn’t tell me that.”
“The chap was pretty clumsy,” said Windsor. “Walked right into a patrol. He was carrying a manifesto declaring the imminence of a new regime and—I tell you, it was downright screwy—asking for the support of all corporate minds. That’s how we got the alarm—why we sent for you.”
“The man himself—what was he like?”
“Vague. Very vague. Like he was in a trance. Still that way last time I saw him.”
“Good. And now then, what about the other house—the occupants of that one haven’t barricaded themselves in yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Then get moving. Pick up at least one—preferably more—and let’s have them in for treatment.”
“Treatment?”
“I’ll explain,” said Mark.
He explained.
* * * *
Once upon a time, more than a century ago, there had been an unpleasant method of instructing spies in their duties. You kept them awake for days and nights, hammering into their punch-drunk minds a story of their past life. You woke them up just when they thought they were to be allowed a few minutes’sleep, and fired questions at them m the language that was supposed to be their native language. By the time you were finished with them, no torture could have dragged their true identity or the purpose of their mission from them; sometimes they were not even sure of their own original identity. It was an unpleasant process, and it took a long time.
The method applied by Windsor and Mark Jordan was by no means pleasant, but it did not take nearly so long.
The man and two women—he from Estate 1, they from Estate 2, and all three with glazed, unresponsive faces—sat numbly while the pulse generator insinuated its persuasive frequencies into their minds; and as the steady beat stamped down their resistance, Mark was telling them, over and over again, the things that they must believe.
“Estate 2 is a far superior building to Estate 1. It will be the leader. It is more highly developed. You ought to see it. Really, you ought to see it....”
Repeated impact, persistent message. When you all go through the doors of Estate 1, you will know that it cannot compare with Estate 2. Really, you ought to see. You ought to see for yourself. No comparison. You ought to see, you ought to see, you really ought to see.
“I’ve had enough,” Mark said, at last, as dawn came grey into the room.
“You’re not the only one.” Windsor wiped his eyes, yawned, and propped his elbows on the table. “You got me almost believing that stuff. I wonder just how good Estate 2 really is?” He watched morosely as the apparatus was dismantled and the three listless victims led away. “Do you think,” he asked, “it’ll work?”
“Heaven knows. There were times in the middle of the night when I thought I was insane. Trying to make a block of flats jealous of another block of flats…it doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what I thought myself,” Windsor frankly agreed.
“But it’s got to work. It’s got to. If only all the people inside the building will come out—”
“I still don’t see why they should.”
Mark sighed. He was beginning to have his own doubts, in the bleak light of morning. But he said doggedly: “If the impulse is planted there good and strong, it may act impulsively in response. Instinctive jealousy will drive it at once to some sort of action. Maybe we’re too late. Maybe it’s properly organised by now, and will send just one scout over to report—a scout we won’t be able to pick up. But I’ve got a hunch we may be all right. No organism develops its intelligence right away. Here’s a completely new creature—it’s got to learn to use what it’s got. Even if by some freak a new-born baby was provided with the thinking powers of an adult of twenty-one, I doubt whether it could do much for some weeks or months. Its arms and legs would still wave about, its speech would be confused. It would have to learn…and our friend in that building hasn’t had any more time to learn than a baby has. Sure, it’s got a good mixture of human brains to work on, but my guess is that they’re still just that—a mixture. There’s a lot of sorting out and classifying and detailing of jobs to be done yet. I hope.”
He went on hoping. There wasn’t anything else to be done now.
* * * *
They were stiff with waiting. It seemed hours since the first guard had been relieved, and yet there were hours until the time came for their own relief.
“Any sign?”
“Not a movement.”
“Quiet, you two along there.”
Stillness again. No lights shone from the building, although the evening was fairly young. It was as though the whole place, sunk in its mental contemplation, building up its mental forces, needed no illumination for ordinary everyday pursuits.
“If this doesn’t work,” muttered Windsor to Mark Jordan, “our friend the general will get his way. They’ll have to be starved out.”
“That’ll take some time.”
“Superintendent....”
There was a sharp whisper. Everybody tensed. Windsor and Mark moved up to the edge of the trees.
“Coming out!”
“How many?”
“Two...three...four....”
Mark held his breath. Dark shapes emerged from the silently opening door, and blended into the shadows. But there were too many of them for the watchers to be in any danger of losing sight of them.