Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 5

by Eric Flint

  Thought of Vince brought a smile. She had already noted in one of numerous, quick, darting glances around the room that it was nearly two hours before her usual rising time. The sun was peering through her bedroom window at that almost horizontal angle which, in the past, had seemed to her a horrifying threat that she would be robbed of precious sleep.

  Now it struck her: "Why don't I call Vince and we'll go for a drive before I have to go to work?"

  She reached for the phone, then considered and drew back. Let the poor man sleep a little longer.

  She dressed swiftly, but with more than usual care. When she glanced at the mirror, it occurred to her that she was better looking than she had realized.

  . . . Very much better looking! she decided an instant later. Intrigued, for a moment amazed, she went up to the mirror, studied the face in it. Her face, familiar. But also the face of a radiant stranger. Another awareness came and the bright, glowing, blue mirror-eyes holding hers seemed to widen.

  "I feel twice as alive as I ever have before!"

  Surprise . . . pleasure . . . and suddenly: "Shouldn't I wonder why?"

  The mirror-face frowned slightly, then laughed at her.

  There had been a change, a wonderful one, and the change was not yet complete. There was a sense of shifting deep inside her, of flows of brightness along the edges of her mind. Curiosity had stirred, but it was light, not urgent or anxious. "When I want to know, I will know!" Barbara told herself . . . and, with that, the trace of curiosity was dismissed.

  "And now."

  She glanced once more around the little room. For over a year, it had held her, contained her, sheltered her. But she didn't want shelter now. The room couldn't hold her today!

  She decided, smiling, "I'll go and wake up Vince."

  She rang Vince's doorbell five times before she heard him stirring inside. Then his voice called harshly, thickly, "Who is that?"

  Barbara laughed. "It's me!"

  "Good God!"

  The lock clicked back and the door opened. Vince stood staring at her with bloodshot eyes. He'd pulled a robe on over his pajamas; his bony face was flushed and his red hair tangled.

  "What are you doing up at this hour?" he demanded as Barbara stepped past him into the apartment. "It's half-past five!"

  "It's a wonderful morning. I couldn't stay in bed. I thought I'd get you to go for a drive with me before I went to work."

  Vince pulled the door shut, blinked at her incredulously. "Go for a drive!" he repeated.

  Barbara asked, "Aren't you feeling well, Vince? You look almost as if you're running a fever."

  Vince shook his head. "I don't feel feverish, but I sure don't feel well either. I don't know what's the matter. Come on and sit down. Want some coffee?"

  "Not especially. I'll make some for you, if you like."

  "Nah, don't bother. I'm sort of nauseated right now." Vince sat down on the couch of the little living room, fished cigarettes and matches from a pocket of his robe, lit a cigarette and grimaced. "That doesn't taste too good either!" He scowled at Barbara. "Something pretty damn funny happened yesterday! And I'm not sure—"

  He hesitated.

  "Not sure of what, Vince?"

  "That that isn't why I'm feeling this way." Vince paused again, shook his head, muttered, "Sounds crazy, I guess. You know that Dr. Gloge you worked for once?"

  It seemed to Barbara as if whole sections of her mind lit up in brilliance at that instant. She heard Vince start to tell his story. But—except for John Hammond's intervention—it was something she already knew.

  Part of a much bigger story . . .

  She thought: Why, that impudent little man! What a wild, wonderful, terrific thing to do!

  Excitement raced through her. The paper she had seen lying on Helen Wendell's desk flashed into her mind, every word sharp and distinct—and not only the words!

  Now she understood. What they meant, what they implied, the possibilities concealed behind them—for herself, for Vince.

  Another feeling awoke. Sharp wariness.

  There was danger somewhere here! John Hammond . . . Helen . . . the hundreds of little impressions she'd received all suddenly flowed together into a picture clear but puzzling—of something supra-normal, she decided, amazed.

  Who were they? What were they doing? In a dozen different ways, they didn't really fit in an organization like Research Alpha. But they had virtually complete control.

  Not that it mattered immediately. Yet she was certain of one thing. They were opposed to what Dr. Gloge was attempting through Point Omega Stimulation, would stop it if they could.

  "But they can't!" she told herself. What Dr. Gloge had begun was right. She could feel the rightness of it like a song of triumph in every aspect of her being. She would have to make sure that it wasn't stopped at this point.

  But she would need to be careful—and act quickly! It was incredibly bad luck that John Hammond had arrived almost while Dr. Gloge was giving Vince his first shot.

  "Do you think I should report it?" Vince asked.

  "You'd look a little foolish if it turned out that you were coming down with the flu, wouldn't you?" Barbara said lightly.

  "Yeah." He sounded hesitant.

  "What does it feel like, aside from the nausea?"

  Vince described his symptoms. Not unlike her own—and she'd had a few bad moments before she went to sleep last night. Vince was going through an initial reaction period more prolonged and somewhat more severe than hers.

  She was aware of a fond impulse to reassure him. But she decided it would be unwise to tell him what she knew. Until he came out of his physical distress, such information might disturb him dangerously.

  She said urgently, "Look, you don't have to go to work until tonight. So the best thing for you is to get a few more hours of sleep. If you start feeling worse, and would like me to take you to a doctor, give me a call and I'll come and get you. Otherwise, I'll phone at ten."

  Vince agreed immediately. "I'm really awfully groggy. That's a big part of it. I'll just stretch out on the couch instead of going back to bed."

  When Barbara left a few minutes later, her thoughts quickly turned away from Vince. She began to consider various methods she might use to approach Dr. Gloge this very day.

  * * *

  Gloge reached the street where Vincent Strather lived and was looking for a parking place, when suddenly he saw Barbara Ellington emerge from the area of the apartment building and start across the street ahead of him.

  The girl was perhaps a hundred yards away. Dr. Gloge braked the panel truck hastily, pulled it in to the curb, rolled up behind another car parked there and stopped. He sat there, breathing hard at the narrow margin by which he had avoided being seen.

  Barbara had hesitated, glancing in the direction of the approaching truck, but now she was continuing across the street. Watching her swift, lithe stride, the proudly erect carriage of her body—comparing that picture with the frozen awkwardness he had observed in all her movements the day before—Dr. Gloge felt his last doubts resolve.

  It was in the human species that Point Omega Stimulation would achieve its purpose.

  His only regret now was that he had not arrived even as much as ten minutes earlier. The girl obviously had come to see Strather, had been with him until now. If he had found them together examination on a comparison basis could have been made of them simultaneously.

  The thought did not in the least diminish the tingling excitement that filled him as he watched Barbara's brown car pull out into the street and move away. He waited until her car was out of sight, then drove the truck down to the alley beside the apartment building and turned in to it. His intention was to give Strather a careful physical examination.

  A few minutes later, Dr. Gloge watched a pointer in the small instrument he was holding drop to the zero mark on the dial. Pulling off the respirator clamped over his mouth and nose, he stood looking down at the body of Vincent Strather sprawled on the liv
ing room couch.

  Vincent Strather's appearance was much less satisfactory than he had expected. Of course, the young man's reddened face and bloodshot eyes might be due to the paralyzing gas Dr. Gloge had released into the apartment as he edged open the back door. But there were other signs of disturbance; tension, distended blood vessels, skin discoloration. By comparison with Barbara Ellington's vigor and high spirits, Strather looked drab and unimpressive.

  Nevertheless, he had survived the first shot.

  Gloge straightened, studied the motionless figure again, then went about the apartment quietly closing the window he had opened exactly one minute after releasing the instantly effective gas. The gas had dissipated now. When its effect on Strather wore off an hour or so from now, there would be nothing to tell the subject that anything had occurred here after Barbara Ellington had left.

  Tomorrow he would return and give Strather the second shot.

  As he locked the back door behind him and walked over to the panel truck, Dr. Gloge decided that he would have to come back and check both his subjects that night.

  He felt extremely confident. It seemed to him that before anyone found out that it had been started, the Point Omega Stimulation experiment on human beings would have run its course.

  IV

  Hammond heard the bell sound as he was shaving in the bathroom of his living quarters which were located behind his office. He paused, then deliberately put down his razor and activated a hidden microphone in the wall.

  "Yes, John?" Helen's voice came.

  "Who came in?"

  "Why—only Barbara." She sounded surprised. "What makes you ask?"

  "The life range indicator just now registered an over-six read."

  "On Barbara!" Helen sounded incredulous.

  "On somebody," said Hammond. "Better have Special Servicing check the indicator out. Nobody else came in?"

  "No."

  "Well—check it." He broke the connection and finished shaving.

  The buzzer sounded in Barbara's office a little later—the signal that she was to report with her notebook to Hammond's office. She went, curious, wondering if he would notice any change in her. Much more important was her own desire to take a closer look at this strange, powerful man who was her boss.

  She walked into Hammond's office and was about to sit in the chair he motioned her to, when something in his manner warned her. Barbara made an apologetic gesture.

  "Oh, Mr. Hammond—excuse me a moment."

  She hurried out of the office and down the hall to the washroom. The moment she was inside, she closed her eyes and mentally re-lived her exact feelings at the instant she had sensed—whatever it was.

  Not Hammond at all, she realized. It was the chair that had given forth some kind of energy flow. Eyes still closed, she strove to perceive what within herself had been affected. There seemed to be an exact spot in her brain that responded each time she reviewed the moment she had started to sit down.

  She couldn't decide what the response was. But she thought: "I don't have to let it be affected now that I know."

  Relieved, she returned to Hammond's office, seated herself in the chair and smiled at Hammond where he sat behind his great, gleaming, mahogany desk.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "But I'm ready now."

  During the half hour that followed, she took shorthand with a tiny portion of her mind, and with the rest fought off a steady, progressively more aware battle against the energy pressure that flowed up at her in rhythmic waves from the chair.

  She had by now decided it was a nerve center that reacted to hypnotic suggestion, and so when Hammond said suddenly, "Close your eyes, Barbara!" she complied at once.

  "Raise your right hand!" he commanded.

  Up came her right hand, with the pen in it.

  He told her to place it back in her lap; and then swiftly put her through several tests—which she recognized as being of a more important kind.

  What interested her even more was that she could let the center respond and monitor the parts of the body that he named—without losing control. So that when he commanded her hand to be numb and suddenly reached over and stuck a needle into it, she felt no sensation; and so she did not react.

  Hammond seemed satisfied. After normalizing the feeling in her hand, he commanded: "In just a moment, I'm going to tell you to forget the tests we've just been doing, but you will remain completely under my control and answer truthfully any questions I ask you. Understand?"

  "Yes, Mr. Hammond."

  "Very well, forget everything we've done and said since I first asked you to close your eyes. When the memory has completely faded, open your eyes."

  Barbara waited about ten seconds. She was thinking: "What roused his suspicions so quickly? And why would he care?" She suppressed an excited conviction that she was about to discover something of the secret life that went on in this office. She had never heard of a hypnotizing chair.

  She opened her eyes.

  She swayed—an act—then caught herself. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Hammond."

  Hammond's gray eyes regarded her with deceptive friendliness. "You seem to be having problems this morning, Barbara."

  "I really feel very well," Barbara protested.

  "If there's anything in your life that has changed recently," he said quietly, "I want you to confide in me."

  That was the beginning of an intensive questioning into her past history. Barbara answered freely. Apparently Hammond was finally convinced, for he presently politely thanked her for the conversation and sent her off to type the letters he had dictated.

  As she sat at her desk a few minutes later, Barbara glanced up through the glass and saw Helen Wendell walking along the hall toward Hammond's office, disappear into it.

  Hammond greeted Helen: "All the time I talked to Barbara, the life range indicator showed eight-four, above the hypnotizable range. And she told me nothing."

  "How is it registering on me?" Helen asked.

  He glanced down at his right to the instrument in an open desk drawer.

  "Your usual eleven-three."

  "And you?"

  "My twelve point seven."

  "Perhaps only the middle ranges are out of order," Helen said, and added, "Special Servicing will make their check after day-time office hours. All right?"

  Hammond hesitated, then agreed that there seemed to be no reason for breaking the rules of caution by which they operated. During the lunch hour, Barbara experienced a brief return of the dizziness. But she was alert now to the possibilities. Instead of simply letting it happen, she tried to be aware of every nuance of the feeling.

  There was a—shifting—taking place inside her.

  She sensed a flow of energy particles from various points in her body to other points. A specific spot in her brain seemed to be monitoring the flow.

  When the pulsations ceased—as abruptly as they had started—she thought: "That was more change taking place. I grew in some way in that minute."

  She sat very still there in the restaurant, striving to evaluate what had changed. But she couldn't decide.

  Nonetheless, she was content. Her impulse had been to seek out Dr. Gloge some time during the day in the hope that he would be wanting to give her a second injection. That ended. Obviously, all the changes from the first shot had not yet taken place.

  She returned to Scientific Investigation and Liaison.

  The bell sound, as Barbara entered, caused Hammond to glance at the indicator. He stared at it for a long moment, then buzzed Helen Wendell.

  "Barbara now reads nine point two!" he said softly.

  Helen came to the door of his office. "You mean her reading has gone up?" She smiled. "Well, that settles it. It is the instrument."

  "What makes you say that?" Hammond seemed strangely unsure.

  "In all my experience," Helen said, "I've never seen anyone change for the better. There's the slow drop as they grow older, but—" she stopped.

  The strong fa
ce was relaxing. Yet after a moment Hammond said, "Still—we never take chances, so I think I'll keep her with me tonight. Do you mind?"

  "It's a nuisance," she said, "but all right."

  "I'll give her the conditioning that overwhelms twelve point 0 and higher. She'll never know what hit her."

  V

  It was shortly after dark when Dr. Henry Gloge parked his black van near Barbara's home. He promptly tuned in on the audio device attached to the tree and adjusted the volume for pickup.