The Coils of Time
Page 12
“Two dols.”
The pain was not yet intolerable, but it was bad.
“Three.”
The pain could still be endured.
“Off!”
Wilkinson realized that his body was bathed in sweat, and that his teeth were gritting painfully together.
“Well, do you like it?”
“What sort of answer do you expect?”
“You should appreciate what I’m doing to you, Wilkinson. Not everybody gets this treatment. Guaranteed not to mark or wound, and all as a result of one of my discoveries. Did you know that what I call organic electricity differs from current generated mechanically? Well, it does. The organic electron seems itself to possess some of the properties of organic life, and it has an affinity for the nerve trunks and endings. But you are supposed to be talking, not me.” She smiled at him with ghastly sweetness. “Incidentally, the controls are calibrated to one hundred dols.”
The next time no halt was called. Three dols … four … ten … and then jump to thirty. Wilkinson knew that he was screaming. He was drowning in a lake of fire, and he had swallowed the flames, and they were eating inwards through his skin and outward from his vitals. He couldn’t stand it. And from some hard core of his mind came a determined voice, I will not stand it.
From the depths of his memory bubbled recollections of those men and women who, from time to time, faced by some intolerable situation, have lost consciousness or, even, released their hold on life altogether.
And then the pain was gone and he was falling, falling, down the dark dimensions, into the blackness that has no end. And he thought, with grim satisfaction, the bitch overdid it. She killed me.
XXII
HE RECOVERED consciousness slowly, realizing that he was sprawled on a hard, cold plastic floor. He thought, so I have to go through it again, and again. He put his hands around his throat and started to squeeze. This was one way that he could cheat Moira Simmons if he had the willpower to carry it through.
And then somebody had fallen onto him and was wrenching his wrists, was trying to lever up his suicidal fingers. Through dimming eyes he saw that it was Olga. He thought viciously, I’ll do for you first. You robbed me of my chance to escape! But she evaded him as he scrambled clumsily to his feet, screaming, “Dr. Henshaw! Vanessa!”
He opened his eyes properly and saw that he was back in the familiar, untidy laboratory, in the center of the roughly painted circle, with Henshaw’s machine — silent now and motionless — looming over him. And there were people running through the doorway — Henshaw, and Titov, and Vanessa. She was the first to reach him.
He realized dimly what must have happened. He had not belonged in the other Universe, and had been driven from it by Moira Simmons. He held Vanessa tightly and hoped desperately that she would never be so driven.
“How did you get back?” Henshaw was demanding. “How did you do it? How did you do it, Wilkinson?”
The real answer came to him in a moment of sudden clarity as he fell asleep in Vanessa’s arms.
“I was pulled back,” he whispered.
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Text copyright © 1964 by Ace Books, Inc.
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Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5307-6
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5307-3