by Dean Koontz
"Please leave," the tapkeeper said.
"I think maybe we had better," Sam suggested.
"Why?" Gnossos asked. "The blackjack bit? He wont hurt us. Remember, every pain we feel, he feels ten times over."
"But-" the tapkeeper began.
"Youre talking about me," Buronto said, stepping up to their table. And his voice was like the voice of a canary-high and sweet and melodic. The trio stared at one another for a moment, astounded. The tiny voice again seeped from the massive throat. "Were you talking about me?"
Sam tittered, then let go and burst out laughing. Gnossos followed with his thunder-laugh. Hurkos fought it, seeming to be comfortable in his recently self-imposed melancholy and reluctant to leave it.
Buronto spoke again: "Stop laughing at me!"
The word "laughing" was so high-pitched that his voice cracked in the middle of it. And Hurkos too burst out laughing, spraying the table with saliva he had been fighting to hold back with the laugh.
"Stop it! Stop it!" Buronto shouted.
But the tension within the three of them had been at a peak. They had been restless, nervous, on edge since the encounter with the jelly-mass. The constant state of expectancy had honed their nerves to sharp, thin wires that were ready to vibrate wildly if only slightly plucked. And big Black Jack Burontos voice-or the strange anachronism that passed for a voice-had been the tuning fork that had set them all roaring as the tension drained. They laughed wildly. They laughed without control, tears streaming down their faces. They laughed all out of proportion to the joke.
"Oh, no, no, no," the tapkeeper moaned. He chanted it over and over as if it were a litany.
"Shut up!" Buronto roared squeakily. His mouth was foaming. Little flecks of mad white... He brought a colossal fist down on the simu-wood table, knocked all the glasses off. But this too only served to send the trio into paroxysms of laughter. Hurkos was leaning on Gnossos, and Sam had his head thrown back, howling.
Black Jack muttered something incomprehensible, all meaning flooded away by burning rage. Clasping one fist in the other, he smashed the wedge of his flesh onto the tabletop, shattered the thing into two halves that stood separately for a moment until the weight of the broken top pulled the laminated leg apart and the table collapsed into the laps of the three Naturals. They ceased their laughter.
Buronto now had a face like a jungle animal. Great swatches of ugly blue discolored the uniform red of his countenance. His teeth were bared and foam-flecked. He snarled and spat and screeched unintelligible things between his teeth. He was mad as all hell and all hell could not have prevailed against him had he turned on it. He latched onto Hurkos chair, ripped it out from under the Mue and sent him crashing to the floor.
"What the hell?" Gnossos said to the tapkeeper. "Hes an Unnatural, but hes also a Sensitive!"
"Hes a Sensitive, yes," the tapkeeper shouted as. Black Jack smashed Hurkos chair into the wall again and again, more violent with each vicious swing. "Hes a Sensitive and feels the victims pain. But he was more of an Unnatural than the doctors knew. He was also a masochist!"
The color drained from the poets face as snowy realization swept in to take its place. "Then he likes being a Sensitive because-"
The bartender finished: "He likes to feel pain!"
Buronto had finished with the chair. There was nothing left of it that could be pounded against the wall. Splinters and scraps of plastic lay over the floor and surrounding tables. The wall was worse for the encounter too. Black Jack Buronto, obviously, would not care if he killed a hundred men. A thousand. He turned to them, plodding through the mounting wreckage. He tossed aside anything that stood in his way, knocking over tables, smashing chairs and lamps and robotenders. He lashed out at Hurkos, struck a blow that sent the small Mue tumbling across another table and crashing to the floor in a cloud of broken glass.
Gnossos stepped up to take a swing at the maddened Buronto, but he was a Natural. It was impossible for him to strike out at a fellow man, no matter how deserving of punishment that fellow man might be. Had Buronto been an animal, the case would have been simpler. But he was not. And a thousand years of sanity made Gnossos check his blow even before he started it. And Buronto delivered a punch that set the poet down hard. As Gnossos and Hurkos struggled to gain their feet, Black Jack heaved a table out of the way and came for Sam.
Patrons were moving out of the doors, hiding behind stable objects, not anxious to get involved but not about to lose out on a good show like this. They waved bottles, hooted, howled, and cheered for Buronto.
And at that moment, the second hypnotic order came to Sam...
A chaos of noise obliterated the lesser noise in the bar. Sams eyes glossed. He wobbled for a moment as neither he nor the mysterious hypnotic master was fully in control of his temporal self. Then, determinedly, he set out for the door. Buronto, seeing the move and misjudging it for retreat, snarled and leaped over the fallen furniture, reaching the door first. "Not yet. I hurt you first!"
He reached with great, corded hands for Sam...
And suddenly doubled up as Sam struck him a blow in the stomach that would have crumbled a wall-because a wall would not have given as Burontos stomach did. And Burontos stomach certainly gave-gave up to Sams wrist. Whoever was controlling Sams body did not seem to have anything against violence. The giant offed, stumbled, but still managed to clutch Sams shoulder. Sam brought a foot up, twisted away, and slammed the foot into Burontos gut, sent him to his knees. Then he was past the Unnatural and through the door.
"After him!" Gnossos shouted. "Hes gotten another order!" The two of them ran past the gasping Buronto and outside. But in the dimness of the night, the streets were empty. Sam was a long time gone.
* * *
IX
The water, chemicals, and lubricants flowed about him in invisible pipes. No, not invisible. Materially nonexistent. There were tubes of force that clothed the liquids. No cumbersome, unreliable, destructible metal fixtures, only pure, raw force adapted to do a better job. Gurgling, the fluids flowed from one part of the giant mechanism to another, covering the block-by-a-block machine quickly and efficiently. This was the machine that kept the Shield up, however, and he was frightened because it all seemed so flimsy. He knew that forces, bent and shaped, were better than actual material parts that could wear out or fail from structural flaws. Still, all those liquids flowing through nothingness, and all of them vital to the maintenence of the Shield...
Click!
Breadloaf whirled around-
Click!
And around again!
Clicker-click-tick, hmmmmmmm.
The noises bothered him; he interpreted every sound as the beginning of the breakdown. Okay, he had seen it. Now he could leave. He walked to the door, hesitated and looked around. There were other clicks and a muffled clank. He would go insane just listening to it operate, he told himself. Before the horror of a possible breakdown could flood his mind with sewage of ridiculous fears, he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind. Grudgingly, and yet with a profound sense of relief, he went back to his office.
The orders were coming to Sam in a swift series now. Between the accomplishment of one thing and the next order, there were only seconds in which he had control of himself and knew precisely who he was. He could never remember what it was he had done on the last order, and was engulfed by the next before he really had a chance to investigate his surroundings.
Now he was standing in a great chamber full of machines. That made him-or rather his hypnotic master through him-feel uneasy. Machines, machines, machines. Humming, gurgling, sputtering. He had broken in. The street door had not been locked, for hardly anyone locked anything these days. No need to, without crimes being committed. But this floor had been sealed. His last order had been to break in here where things flowed through pipes he could not see and machinery throbbed with an overwhelming purpose. But what had he done before that? And what would he do
next?
Then the chaos and the noises came, and he was moving...
When he came out, a package he had been holding under his arm was gone. He had not had time to examine it. He did not know what he had done with it. Or what it had been.
Then the chaos and the noises came, and he was moving...
Breadloaf rubbed his fists in his eyes, pulled open a desk drawer and fumbled in it for anti-snooze tablets. He found a bottle, popped two pills in his mouth, swallowed without benefit of water. Recapping the bottle, he withdrew a second container of tiny nerve pills. He was in the process of swallowing one of these when the door flew open, crashing into its slot with a sharp, ear-shattering crash. There was a man standing there, eyes like vacant, unseeing marbles, his hands flung outward like the hands of a stage magician. The tips of his fingers glowed and vibrated with some hideous power that was immediately a thing to be called evil.
And from the fingernails came darts.
Needles of sleep.
They bit into Breadloaf, spreading their red warmth, pulling him down into a Shieldless darkness that forced but denied him to scream...
When Sam was in control of his body again, the first thing that struck his attention was the man slumped in the chair-seemingly unconscious-behind the desk. His every muscle was taut beneath the surface relaxation, as if the death penalty had been the only alternative to unconsciousness. Secondly, there was the screen. It was to the right of him, and for a moment it had been in a low-key color series of magenta and black. Abruptly, it spewed forth oranges and whites and creams that splashed across the room and grabbed his eyes.
He walked to the screen, stared at it. An indescribable chill swept up and down his spine. It was as if the colors were alive and wanted out.
"What do you want? Who are you?"
The voice startled him, and he leaped, his heart pounding. But it had not been the colors; it had been the man, Sam walked to the massive desk. "My name is Sam. I was-"
"What do you want? Why did you do this to me?"
"Do what?"
"I cant move, damn you!"
Sam hesitated, looked about the room, sensing a ghost scene of what must have transpired. "I paralyzed you?"
Breadloafs thin lips moved, and his eyes revolved like ball bearings in well-oiled grooves. Yet the rest of his body was carved from wood, stiff and immovable. "You and the darts beneath your fingernails. What the hell kind of man are you!"
Sam lifted his hands and looked at them. The nails were discolored as if fine bits of flesh had puffed into ashes beneath them, leaving blackened pits. He rubbed one, but the color was definitely not on the surface.
"What kind of man are you!" Breadloaf roared this time, panic flushing every word, every word cored with fear.
"I dont know," Sam said finally. "Is there some way I can help you?"
Breadloaf was breathing heavily. "Yes! Go get help!"
"I cant do that," Sam said. He stood on the carpet, shuffling one foot over the other, feeling somewhat the hypocrite.
"Why? Why cant you?"
"It wont let me."
"It?"
Briefly, he recounted his story-the jelly-mass, the hypnotic commands. When he finished, the other mans eyes were wide-too wide to contain anything but horror. "The Prisoner!" he croaked.
"What?"
"The Prisoner of the Shield. Youre under its direction!"
Sam turned instinctively toward the portal of wavering colors. "Then they are alive!"
Breadloaf was laughing, and Sam could not get him to stop. It was not the laughter of him and Hurkos and Gnossos in the Inferno. This was laughter at the inevitability of some unknown tragedy. He could sense that, but he could not stop the other man. Neither could he leave to get help. His feet would carry him toward the doorway but not through it. There was a mental block that kept him within the room. His memory began to clear slightly, and he could remember what else he had done in this building. He had planted some sort of bomb in the machinery below. And it must be the machinery that kept this... this Shield going.
"A thousand years," Breadloaf shouted between whoops of laughter. "For a thousand years it tried the same things over and over, and we thought it was too dense to attempt anything different. Instead, it was pretending stupidity, making us lax. And it worked. Just when we were feeling secure, it takes you and breaks in with ridiculous ease. A thousand years to the Prisoner are like but a day to us." He laughed again, harshly.
There was sweat on Sams upper lip. He wiped it off and became aware of perspiration all over him. He was frightened. A thousand years behind the Shield. And it had only been playing around, using the time as a diversion. A score of centuries had meant nothing to it. He watched it with a loathing that touched the deepest part of him. Were the colors its true appearance or merely the effects of it filtered by the Shield? He thought the colors were a front, not the true nature of it. The true nature could not be something so beautiful and vibrant, surely. A blue splotch rippled up from the bottom, seemed to form a question mark like one would find on a large tronicsign-
Tronicsign!
He remembered seeing the high tronicsign band that ran around all four sides of the Breadloaf Building, carrying letters twenty feet tall. Perhaps the control console was up here. If it was, he could spell out a message for Gnossos and Hurkos. Surely they would be looking for him. It was almost a certainty they could see the towering tronicsign from anywhere in this part of the city. If they were in this part of the city...
"The tronicsign controls," he asked-said.
"What?" Breadloafs eyes slid back and forth in the sockets liked trapped animals.
"The advertising screen. The light letters. Where are the controls for the light letters?"
"Why?"
"Where are they?" There was a tone of command in his voice that he had not known he possessed.
"Theres a master set in the main lounge, but I have a secondary plug-in set in the wall cabinet-over there."
He found it, plugged it in, began typing out a message that the big boards would hold in glowing-red? amber? blue?-letters. He decided on crimson words against a black background. GNOSSOS/HURKOS... "What floor is this?" he asked Breadloaf.
"Top."
TOP FLOOR. EXECUTIVE OFFICE. COME QUICKLY. SAM.
There would be waiting then. He paced the carpet briskly, now and then trying to go out of the door but always discovering that the hypnotic suggestions prohibited that. Finally, they came. And they demanded explanations.
He gave them the few he could, told them about the bomb planted below, the bomb that would wreck the machinery, shut down the Shield, and set the Prisoner free-whatever the Prisoner might be. He gave them the location of it, told them how to remove it and how to handle it: gently. They ran to get it. It seemed like a very long time that they were gone-time enough to construct a thousand possible deaths that might result if the bomb exploded. Just when he was ready to count them as deserters, they returned with the bomb and the timer, carrying it as if it were a piece of delicate and expensive crystal.
Carefully, Sam disconnected the timer, lifted the halves of the casing apart, and poured the volatile liquid out of the single window behind Breadloafs massive desk. Four breaths were released simultaneously as he turned and said, "Its okay."
"Then this is it!" Gnossos said, the first to recover completely. He paced back and forth, looking at the Shield, stopping to touch it, to examine the point where it went flush with the wall. "This is the thing that has been directing you. But if it is trapped behind this Shield, how did it get to you to hypnotize you? And how did it whip up that jelly-cored ship?"
"I think I can... shed some light on that," Breadloaf grunted. He was still paralyzed, but his fingers were tingling, and he could move his thumbs. The effects were beginning to wear away.
They turned to him. Gnossos crossed the room. "What light?"
"He-" Breadloaf began.
"Sam," Sam identified him
self.
Breadloaf blinked appreciation. "Yes. Sam. I think you are all operating under a false assumption. The Prisoner did not get Sam. He did not kidnap Sam. Sam is the Prisoners creation."
"Creation?" Gnossos snorted.
"Yes. The Prisoner imagined Sam, built his imaginings into a concrete entity. It was probably done with a last big burst of the Prisoners energies."
"Thats absurd!"
Breadloaf tried to shake his head, only succeeded in making his lips quiver and his eyes tremble. "No. The Prisoner concentrated, summed up all his resources, and shaped a man and a ship. The ship was not a machine, for machines are alien to the Prisoners mind. Some places, the dimensions are rather close, due to the warping of the higher dimension. Perhaps at one of these places he forced his thoughts through the thin barrier and made Sam and the ship."
"But why not force himself through at one of those spots?" Hurkos asked.
"He could not do that with what energies he had left. You see, he is much, much larger than the ship and Sam put together, larger by an infinite degree. He is the entire higher dimension!"
Ocher birds flittered over green and blue oceans...
"One creature is an entire dimension?"
Breadloaf coughed. "If that creature is God, yes. And that is precisely who the Prisoner of the Shield is!"
* * *
X
"God!" Gnossos shouted.
Hurkos wandered next to the Shield, pressed his face to it, looking into the colors that swirled, folded upon themselves and became new colors, Here, brought to him through modern science, was the being that prayer could not yield. Technology had replaced faith and with far better results.
"The dreams," Gnossos said, turning to the dazzling display on the screen. "The dreams Hurkos took from it were the dreams of a paranoid, then; they were the dreams of a being obsessed with demon-persecution."