7 Steps to Midnight

by Richard Matheson

  “Who are you?” he mumbled.

  He hissed as he felt another slap on his cheek, this time harder.

  “Now listen to me,” the man’s voice said coldly. “I’m going to tell you once and no more. Get it right or next time you’ll be sorry.”

  Chris shivered, feeling cold. Was that a dream sensation? He couldn’t believe it somehow. He still heard the air jets below, felt the shaking of the Hovercraft. I’m not asleep, he thought in sudden dread.

  I’m drugged.

  “Do you know what reality slippage is?” the man’s voice asked.

  “What?”

  Chris gasped as his cheek was slapped again.

  “I said listen to me, damn it,” the man’s voice told him angrily. “Reality slippage. Do you understand? Reality slippage.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” Chris said, frightened. He braced himself for another slap, which didn’t come.

  “It’s what’s happening to you,” the man’s voice said. “It’s happening to everyone who’s working on the turbulence problem. You understand?”

  “Yes.” Chris drew back unconsciously, fearing another slap.

  “Dozens of you losing touch with reality. You understand?”

  Chris cried out softly as his cheek was slapped again, harder yet. “Don’t,” he pleaded.

  “Then listen to me,” snarled the man. “You made it worse by wagering. Do you understand?”

  Chris caught his breath in shock.

  “Veering?” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Veering?” he repeated, more loudly.

  “Yes, Veering,” the man’s voice said, as though through clenched teeth.

  Another unexpected slap made Chris sob chokingly.

  “Finish your work before the slippage is complete,” the man’s voice said. He sounded as though he were repressing utter fury.

  “But how—?”

  Chris broke off, crying out, as his cheek was slapped again.

  “Do you want to be replaced?” the man’s voice demanded. “Do you want it all to end? Do you want to lose touch with reality? Give up your mind?”

  Chris had his left hand up before his face to stop the slaps. He now knew that he wasn’t asleep. The coffee, he thought suddenly. The bitterness.

  He stiffened as he felt the man’s face so close to his that the warmth of the man’s breath was on his lips.

  “I tell you this and only once,” the man said slowly. “It’s now only six steps to midnight.”

  PART 3

  1

  Faintly, distantly, he heard the laughter of a woman. It’s her, he thought. But why laughing? And with such hysteria?

  Chris opened his eyes and looked up at a ceiling. He was in a bed, lying on his back, a pillow underneath his head. Now where? he thought. And how long had he been sleeping?

  The woman was still laughing, though he could barely hear it now. It wasn’t Alexsandra, couldn’t be. He turned his head to the right.

  Windows. Gray outside. Was that a filmy drizzle falling? Where the hell am I? he thought. Pushing up on an elbow, he looked around.

  A hotel room.

  He slid his legs over the mattress and dropped them across the edge. Sitting up, facing the windows, he tried to recall the last thing that had happened to him.

  Remembrance came immediately. The Hovercraft. The stinging slaps across his left cheek. The voice. “Dozens of you losing touch with reality. You understand?”

  No, Mister, I don’t, he thought. Not a bit of it.

  Except that the man had mentioned the wager. And verified that it was Veering. What else had he said? Chris put his left hand over his eyes, retreating to that moment to hear the man’s voice telling him “It’s happening to everyone who’s working on the turbulence problem.”

  6 steps to midnight.

  Chris lowered his hand and blinked, focusing on the windows. He tried to stand but wavered, feeling dizzy. Drugged, he remembered now. Goddamn it, he’d been drugged again! What did he have to do, go without food and drink to prevent it from happening?

  He stood motionless, arms outstretched as though he were standing on a tightrope, trying not to topple off. Easy, he told himself. How had they done it this time? It had to have been the coffee in the Hovercraft waiting room. It had tasted vile, as he recalled.

  He groaned and shook his right hand as though to brush away confusion. There were just too many things to grasp.

  He looked around. That woman was still laughing, a little more loudly now. She was in the next room obviously. What the hell was she laughing at? Who the hell was she with, a troupe of stand-up comics? Or was she chained naked to a bed, with a feather-wielding sadist hovering above her? Just shut up, lady, he thought.

  Clenching his teeth, he walked slowly to the nearest window and looked out, blinked. “Jesus,” he muttered.

  Off in the distance, looking ghostlike in the mist, was the Eiffel Tower.

  He breathed deeply and slowly, a faint, humorless smile drawing back his lips. He remembered wondering, on the Hovercraft, if he’d see Alexsandra again and thinking that “surely” he had to go to Paris.

  “Well, I have,” he murmured. Another deep breath released. “But for what?”

  He looked at the courtyard below. There was a design on its paving that resembled dark blue sine waves on a gray background. There were benches down there, small trees. Chris lifted his gaze again and stared at the specter-like tower. Paris, he thought. My God, Paris.

  Turning abruptly—he had to lean against the window frame as a momentary wave of dizziness fogged over him—he looked at the room.

  There was his bag again, lying on a table. Whoever was behind all this was certainly efficient.

  He checked his watch and saw that it was still the same day, just past three o’clock. How I do get around, he thought without amusement.

  He moved to a bureau and stared at his reflection in the mirror above it. He looked drugged, for Christ’s sake, punchy as hell. He ran his right hand through plastered-down hair. In the next room, the woman’s laughter escalated suddenly. She sounds demented, he thought. The feather-wielding madman must be tickling into high gear.

  He looked over at a small desk with a telephone on it. There was a yellow card lying next to the telephone and, stepping over to the desk, he picked up the card.

  Mme/Mlle/M Barton was on the top line of the card, his name printed in ink. No. de chambre 729; the seven had a line through it. Date de partre—blank. When was he scheduled to leave? Or was he going to leave? Was this the end of the line? A modest pensione in Paris, supplies to do his work with an assumed nom? He scowled. The notion was ridiculous.

  He looked at the card again. It folded in the middle. He turned down the top half and saw the words Bienvenu au Paris Penta Hôtel.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m here. What’s next on the agenda? An ascent up Mont Blanc? A shoot-out in a Bavarian castle? A race…?

  “Fuck it,” he muttered. He had to come back to earth. Seeing a coffeemaker on the wall, he moved to it and lifted off the pot. Carrying it into the bathroom, he filled it with water. Was the water drugged? he wondered. He frowned at himself. Sure, they piped it just to this room. Come on, Barton. Get real.

  But when he carried the pot back to the coffeemaker and slid it back into place, he found himself fingering the packet of coffee. Now that could be drugged. He turned it over and over in his hand.

  “God,” he muttered finally. He tossed the packet onto the desk. Forget the coffee, he thought. I’d love some but I’m not—repeat, not—going to surrender my brain to these bastards again. He had a strong feeling that the packet of coffee was legitimate. But after what he’d been through, he simply wasn’t willing to take a chance on it.

  He opened the bag and checked its interior. Everything looked the same. He examined some of the contents, then dropped them back into place. Sighing, he sat on the bed. “All right, quo vadis now?” he muttered. Was Robert Ludlum in the ne
xt room, dreaming up more complications for him? Was that why that woman was laughing so hysterically?

  The woman stopped laughing at that moment. Chris waited, listening, but there was only silence now. Had she left the room with Robert? he thought. Or died from the tickling?

  He sat, shoulders slumped, looking toward the window. He couldn’t see the tower from where he was, only the gray sky, the near-invisible drizzle. I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles, sang some murky-voiced chanteuse in his head. Except it wasn’t winter, it was June.

  Reality slippage, he thought.

  Was there really such a thing? Was that what Veering was talking about when he presented his wager?

  Chris scowled and tried to blank his mind. Looking around, he saw a pad and pencil on the bedside table. Le crayon est sur la table, he thought.

  “Finish your work before the slippage is complete,” he remembered the man saying. Well, I’m sorry, Mister, but it’s not that easy to finish my work, he thought angrily. I have a few problems—

  His legs jerked in spasmodically as the telephone rang.

  It made a different ringing sound, like British telephones did, Chris thought. More strident, more demanding.

  Should he answer it? Go along with the next step, the next ride? He sighed. He had a strong urge to leave the room, go down and see if he could somehow book the next flight to Phoenix. He stared indecisively at the phone as it kept ringing loudly.

  I can’t, he thought finally. He still didn’t know what was really going on. And he wasn’t brought all this distance on a lark. Death had taken place. This was hard reality.

  Standing, he moved to the telephone and, even though he felt like a pawn again, lifted the handset from its cradle and raised it to his head. “Yes?”

  “Chris, it’s Alexsandra.”

  He started, tensing. “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Meet me outside Sacré-Cœur, Montmartre,” she told him. “Right away.”

  “What’s happening—?”

  He broke off, staring at the earpiece in disbelief. She’d hung up on him.

  His heartbeat had quickened again. “Goddamn, now what?” he muttered with nervous anger. The anger diminished quickly when he thought about seeing her again. It was absurd—it had been entirely too brief, too rapid—but he was in love with her. “Well, why not?” he demanded. Everything else was insane. Why not that?

  Sacré-Cœur, he thought. Wasn’t that a church, a cathedral? Montmartre. A section of Paris?

  He stood immobile for a few seconds, trying to organize himself. Abruptly, then, he went into the bathroom, washed off his face and combed his hair.

  Returning to the bedroom, he changed shirts. He was about to slip on his jacket when he realized that he hadn’t called his mother yet. He knew she’d be worried by now, maybe frantic.

  The question was, would “they” pay a long-distance telephone charge?

  “Try,” he told himself. Picking up the handset, he gave the hotel operator his mother’s number.

  No problem. Less than a minute later, he was listening to the sound of her telephone ringing.

  She wasn’t home. He had to leave a message on her answering machine. He didn’t tell her where he was; he felt a sense of caution about that. “I’m okay though,” he told her. “I’ll get in touch with you again as soon as I can. Love you.”

  As he left the room and started down the corridor—the room key had been lying on the table next to his bag—he felt inside his jacket pocket to find a clump of bills in the right-hand pocket. Taking them out, he looked at them. Somehow, he was not the least surprised to see that “they” had substituted French currency for British.

  “They think of everything,” he said.

  Except enlightening him.

  ***

  It had taken him nearly half an hour to get a taxi; there was a line of waiting guests in front of the hotel. Not very fiction-like, he’d thought. In a book or movie, the hero leaves his room—boom, he’s in a taxicab en route to further perils. Not like real life, even with the doorman ordering for him. He had no choice but to wait impatiently, anxious to be with Alexsandra again.

  When he finally settled back on the seat of the cab and told the driver where he wanted to go, the driver nodded, saying, “You are Americain?”

  Chris looked at him suspiciously. I know I’m being paranoid, he thought, but after everything that’s happened…

  “Monsieur?”

  Chris swallowed, not knowing what to say. He forced suspicion away then. For Christ’s sake, he couldn’t be surrounded by spies. Were they so goddamn cunning they could time the taxis perfectly, making sure he got the very one with agent X-9 driving it? Come on, he chided himself. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” he asked.

  “Monsieur is Americain?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Your accent,” the driver said. Chris felt like an idiot. What else? he thought. He nodded.

  “From California?”

  Chris couldn’t help grinning. “Why do you think that?”

  “Just curious,” the driver said. “I plan to move to California one day.”

  “Uh-huh.” Chris leaned to the left as the driver made an abrupt turn and started driving past rows of colorful old buildings. “Offices?” Chris asked him.

  “Residential,” the driver said.

  Chris nodded.

  “Oh, merde,” the driver muttered.

  Chris repressed a smile. Looking ahead, he saw a traffic jam waiting.

  “No, we will bypass this,” the driver said. Signaling, he made a right turn and picked up speed. At the end of the block, he made a fast left turn; Chris saw the street sign: Boulevard Maurice Barres. To his right, he saw a park.

  “Bois de Boulogne,” the driver told him.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Chris nodded again, looking at the people on the sidewalk. Two were walking small dogs; a woman in furs and high heels and a squat, middle-aged man wearing a black trench-coat and beret, a cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth.

  Chris glanced to the front as movement caught his eye. Pedestrians were crossing in front of the traffic, leaping to safety like frantic ballet dancers. Chris watched in awe. None of the vehicles slowed down for an instant. Amazing the street wasn’t littered with bodies, he thought.

  He twisted his head to the right. “Is that a camel?” he asked in surprise.

  “Indeed,” the driver said. “That is the Jardin d’Acclimatation. A zoo. Children love it. Many animals, many rides. Also the Grand Maison des Poupées—a doll museum. Some wonderful antique dolls.”

  “I see,” Chris said. If the man is a spy, he thought, he certainly is a chatty one.

  The taxi reached a traffic circle now. The driver seemed to floor his accelerator; Chris had to clutch at the seat to keep from falling over. The circle was jammed with speeding, honking cars and taxicabs. Jesus God, he thought, what is this, a training course for Le Mans?

  Suddenly, the taxi shot off to the right as though flung off by centrifugal force. To Chris’s right now was what looked like the skyscrapered downtown of any major city. “La Defense,” he thought he heard the driver say. He looked in wonderment at a huge building built like a square arch, windows spaced around its perimeter.

  “The Arc de La Défense,” the driver said. “A modern version of the Arc de Triomphe. If you look through it, you’ll see the Arc de Triomphe further down.”

  Chris looked but missed it. Abruptly, then, the taxicab was speeding onto an expressway. “La Périphérique,” the driver told him. From the word periphery? Chris wondered. The external boundary of an area, the dictionary definition floated up into his mind.

  He closed his eyes. There was nothing visible now but a wall on either side. Great, he thought. Here I am in gay Paris—well, scratch that adjective the way things are today—okay, in chic, romantic Paris and what do I have to look at? A pair of gray walls.

  He drifted into thought. The thing that bothered him most about
all this, he recognized, was its lack of meaning. The one thing his mind craved in any situation was the one thing he couldn’t find in this one. Sure, he had the basics: his work, his replacement, his assisted flight. But what was behind it all? Who was against him? Who was helping him?

  He grimaced and shook his head. Once again, the complication of Veering’s wager threw him off. Every time it seemed as though this situation might conceivably be analyzed, the wager threw a wrench into the works.

  He opened his eyes, feeling the taxi ease to the right. A sign ahead read Porte de Clignancourt.

  As the taxi shot off the expressway, Chris could see the city again. Somehow, they’d climbed without his noticing or feeling it, for now Paris lay far below. Montmartre, he thought. Martre he didn’t know, but mont meant mountain and it certainly seemed as though they were on a mountain here. It was still hazy, though the drizzle had stopped, but he could see, he estimated, twenty miles or more across the city. Another angle on the ghostlike tower. Would he have a chance to visit it? he wondered.

  There was a church to his right. “Notre Dame de Clignancourt,” the driver said. “Incidentally, this is not a neighbourhood to walk in after dark. Monsieur should leave before then.”

  Up ahead, Chris saw what he assumed was Sacré-Cœur, its many cupolas topped by a huge dome that looked as though it were made of sugar icing. “Is that—?” he started, pointing.

  “Sacré-Cœur,” the driver said, nodding. He pulled the taxi over to the curb and braked hard.

  Chris paid the bill, tipping the man fifteen percent; it took him a moment or two to recall the value of French currency. Then he got out of the cab and it was driven off at high speed. So much for my spy theory, Chris thought.

  He stood motionless, looking across Paris. The vista was awesome. In addition to the Eiffel Tower, he could see the curving Seine River, La Défense, the Arc de Triomphe and what he took to be the gothic extravagance of Notre-Dame Cathedral.

  He looked around then. Where was he supposed to meet Alexsandra? All she’d said was Sacré-Cœur. She hadn’t indicated whether she’d meet him inside the church or not.