‘Lynda,’ he whispered, ‘wake up. It’s late.’
There was no reaction. He shook her, gently at first, then harder and harder with increasing horror. He slapped her hands and face without result. Whisky from a decanter brought coughing but no return to consciousness. A numbness began to grip Massner’s mind. The truth grew inside him like a malignant cancer. ‘No!’ he thought, ‘It can’t be! Not that; it has to be something else!’
He ran out of the office, searching for Sagar, for Robinson, for anyone who would tell him it wasn’t true.
Almost blindly he ran into the centre of the Coma Colosseum, into the dodecahedron-shaped room. Anglesomne was being placed on the bed in, the middle of the room. Television cameras, relaying the scene to the giant screens located around the bowl of the Coma Colosseum, focused their electronic eyes on his impressive age-seamed face.
The machines which would stimulate the sub-cortical recesses of his dormant mind were being placed in position around the bed.
‘Robinson!’ Massner screamed. A dozen anxious faces turned towards him. Hands gripped him from behind. ‘Robinson!’ he screamed again.
‘Here, Massner; be quiet!’ the parapsychologist said.
‘Now, what is it? What’s wrong?’ Dr. Robinson stared at Massner’s agitated face with concern.
‘Lynda Sagar,’ Massner gasped, ‘Who is she, what is she?’
Robinson read what had happened in Massner’s wild and distraught eyes. ‘Coma?’
Massner nodded.
‘She’s Anglesomme’s daughter,’ Robinson said helplessly. ‘An Empath.’
Pain washed the strength from Massner’s body. His knees buckled. Coma-death! Only the arms gripping his shoulders prevented him from collapsing altogether. ‘Not her too!’ he moaned, ‘Not her!’
Savagely he thrust the hands away from him. ‘Where’s Sagar?’ he screamed. ‘I’ve got to find him!’
Dr. Robinson looked helplessly first around the polyhedral room, then into the twelve surrounding segments. The medical teams were beginning their work; incisions were being made, the artificial blood vessels were being attached to exposed arteries. ‘I don’t know,’ Robinson said. ‘He was here several minutes ago. Perhaps the chapel?’
‘The chapel?’ Massner repeated. Of course, the chapel!
* * * *
From somewhere not far above came the echoing wash of the announcer’s amplified commentary to the visuals flickering across the sixty-foot screens in the Coma Colosseum bowl.
The chapel door was locked.
No response came to his hammerings. Savagely, thankful for the physical pain that however briefly masked the torment inside him, Massner smashed the heavy door open with a shoulder charge that stunned and winded him.
At the far end of the chapel stood a huge wooden cross. Sagar stood before it on a raised dais. He was naked. As Massner crashed through the chapel door, Sagar turned to face him. There was an expression of intense excitement on his face.
As Massner began running desperately down the central aisle, Sagar levelled an automatic pistol, took aim, and fired. The bullet smashed into Massner’s thigh, throwing him sideways into a tangle of collapsing pews.
Numbly, he realized that the bullet had shattered his leg. Almost fainting with the pain, Massner dragged himself upright.
‘Sagar!’ he screamed. ‘What have you done?’
‘You’re too late, Massner.’ Sagar laughed, his words echoing off the empty walls, ‘Too late!’
He turned his back to the great wooden cross and extended his arms along the horizontal. There was a series of shattering staccato reports as exploding bolts, ripping through his flesh from inside the cross, pinioned him at the wrists and at the ankles in the attitude of crucifixion. Blood streamed from the wounds.
‘For God’s sake, Sagar, what have you done?’ Massner cried.
‘For God’s sake, Massner?’ Sagar gasped. ‘Not for him - surely you of all people realized that?’
Slowly the cross began to inch upwards on humming gears towards the brilliant light of the Coma Colosseum bowl. Sagar stared down at him, moaning slightly as the agony of his wounds penetrated the rapidly weakening painkillers.
‘Tethys is finished. Our world’s come to an end. Massner, we can accept that even if they can’t.’
‘You bastard!’ Massner raged, ‘Answer me, what have you done?’
‘The donors,’ Sagar smiled, blood flecking his rictic lips, ‘they’re all suffering acute toxic psychosis induced by five-thousand micrograms of Lysergic Acid-Psilocybin administered within the last ten minutes. And a final irony; they’re all recipients of surgically transplanted simian hearts!
‘Can you predict what’s going on in their psychotic minds, Massner? Can you imagine what Anglesomne’s protected ego will make of it? Insanity, Massner. Mass insanity!’ His crazed laughter echoed hideously in Massner’s unbelieving ears.
The great wooden cross emerged into view as the first empathic responses of the approaching psychic storm began to flood over the Coma Colosseum ...
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New Writings in SF 29 - [Anthology] Page 20