The Long Sleep Read online

  Was a war in progress?

  That seemed unlikely. What had happened to the conquering horde before which the original owners might have fled? Once the building had been evacuated, no one had come to claim it.

  Besides, if war were the reason for abandonment, why leave the men and women in the pods? After all, the cylinders and the sleepers seemed to be the central reason for the entire project.

  Still searching for an answer with which he could live, Joel came to the last office on that level— where he finally uncovered a trace of the people who had worked here. Another corpse.

  It was the skeleton of a large man, slumped across the desk in a posture of defeat which it had held for many years. In the open air the worms had made swift work of it; it contained not a scrap of leathery flesh. The skeleton was white and clean and looked as if it had been scrubbed with sand and water. It had no hair. The few tattered garments it wore were so rotten that they crumbled into ashes when he touched them.

  Joel carefully pulled the skeleton away from the desk and let it slide back in the swivel chair. Finger bones rattled together like dry sticks of kindling.

  He opened all the drawers in the desk, hoping to find something, anything, even the last words of a man long dead. But the drawers contained only dust.

  When he turned away from the desk, the skeleton appeared to be glaring at him. Its gleaming skull was thrust forward, shoulders hunched, as if it were ready to launch itself at him.

  He swung it around until it faced the wall. It stared at the plaster with the same intensity which it had focused on him a moment earlier. Perhaps its gaze wasn't one of malevolent intent, but a longing for the sarcophagus where it might rest after so many years of sitting in a chair.

  When he continued his search, safe from fossilized observation, he met with more disappointment. The four-drawer file cabinet was locked, raising hope that something worthwhile was protected within. But when he used a heavy, rust-filmed letter opener to snap the main latch, he found all four drawers empty. The supplies closet held no supplies.

  As he closed the closet door a cold finger tapped his shoulder as if testing his solidity. For an instant he was certain that the skeleton was touching him. However, when he leaped sideways and turned on it, he found that it was worse than that, worse than the skeleton.

  He backed up, bumped into the file cabinet, and realized that he was trapped.

  “Stay back,” he said.

  The creature which had come up behind him now took another step in his direction, raising its pale right hand. It had no face. Where its features should have been, there was only a smooth, plastic sheen of flesh. No eyes. No nose. No mouth. No hair on the bright, shiny head.

  It reached for him.

  “No!”

  It touched him with fingers so cold they stung his wrist and sent shivers through him.

  Joel drew back.

  The faceless man followed him.

  He swayed as his strength seemed to drain out of him. He sank to his knees, gasping for breath, sweating… He watched the floor circle round like an opponent waiting for a chance to jump him, bear him down, and finish him. What was happening here? What had this thing done to him? With his last bit of strength, he raised his head and looked at the faceless man.

  Noseless, eyeless, mouthless, terrifying, the creature slowly tilted its barren face towards his, as if it were returning his gaze.

  What have you done to me? he wanted to ask.

  He couldn't speak.

  Darkness swooped down like a huge bird. Wings enfolded him: pinions, feathers, spiny ribs… Dizzy, he pitched forward, out cold. He was unaware that the icy fingers touched him again, exploring him more fully this time, taking his pulse and thumbing back his eyelids to see if he were genuinely unconscious.

  III

  Joel lifted a lead blanket and rose out of a bed of molasses, shook off the covers of darkness and came dizzily awake. In the first flush of sensation, as he waited for the whirling to subside, he did not remember the faceless man. When the memory returned, it was like a punch just below the heart, and it stopped his breathing for a long moment.

  He could hear voices, but he didn't want to open his eyes to see who was speaking. He didn't want to discover that it was the man without a face, for then he'd have to wonder how the thing could speak when it had no mouth. Curiosity like that could lead only to madness.

  He contented himself with listening, and he discovered that the voices were in another room, distant enough to be meaningless. He opened his eyes then. He was lying in a huge bed in a darkened room.

  The voices stopped abruptly, as if the speakers knew he was finally awake.

  A door slammed somewhere in the house. Footsteps. Creaking floorboards. Another door, closer at hand this time, opened and closed more quietly than the first. Like evenly spaced sighs, soft footsteps sounded on the carpet. He had closed his eyes again, but he felt the light the visitor had switched on. Someone loomed over him, casting a shadow across his face. A hand touched his forehead. It was a warm small hand, a woman's hand.

  Joel opened his eyes again and stared straight into her eyes which were blue and quite large, one of them partially covered by the thick fall of her black hair. She had a pug nose, full lips, and a creamy expression. She wasn't beautiful. She was better than that: cute and saucy. The left corner of her mouth had an insouciant twist; her blue eyes were merry. He wanted to reach up and embrace her and pull her down and kiss her. At least.

  “Feeling better?” she asked.

  He nodded when he found his mouth was too dry for him to speak.

  Her face showed deep concern. “Does your head hurt?”

  “No.” He wheezed like a punctured bellows when he spoke.

  “You're sure.”

  “Sure.”

  “The doctor's been here and gone already.” She used both her hands to caress his face. Her fingertips pressed gently against his chapped lips. Obviously, there was an intimacy between them of which he was ignorant. Hell, he didn't even know who she was.

  “I'll give you your next medpac treatment if you're ready for it,” she said.

  “My what?”

  “Medpac treatment,” she said, frowning at him.

  Rather than reveal the extent of his amnesia before he knew who she was and where he was, he nodded as if he understood. “Yeah. I think I could use a medpac.”

  She sat down beside him. “You'll be well soon, ball-sized device that looked like a water-smoothed stone. She fooled with it for a moment, giving him a chance to study her clothing: a white blouse with a huge roll collar and a deeply cut neckline and six pearly buttons on each long cuff, brief shorts the color of wet pimentos so thin that they might have been sprayed onto her, and boots which snugly encased her feet and half her calves. She had long brown legs, perfect and elegant as any he had ever seen.

  When she returned to the bed she put the stone on his chest and touched a clearly defined discoloration on the top of it. The stone came alive and fed microscopic tendrils into him, diagnosed his current condition, and administered whatever drugs it deemed suitable. It withdrew its tendrils and was still. She had explained what it was doing when she saw the confusion and fear in his eyes, and now she removed the device and put it on the covers beside him.

  “Medpac,” he said.

  She looked at him curiously.

  “What a hell of a thing,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked around the room, pleased by what he saw. Wood paneling, teak or something as dark as teak. A low ceiling with antique light fixtures. Emerald green velvet drapes. Heavy furniture: a dresser with six drawers, two full-length mirrors in ornate frames, a nightstand with a black and red marble top, a richly carved and curlicued chest which doubled as a dressing table, two bookcases well stocked with leatherette bound volumes the titles of which he could not quite see.

  She sat down beside him. “You'll be well soon, darling.” Her voice was firm, yet fem
inine, soothing, cool.

  Those few words drew his attention back to her, and he could not imagine why he had ever looked away from her in the first place.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  The frail smile vanished. A frown took its place. Her wandering fingers froze as they smoothed down his hair. Who am I? You don't know me?”

  “No.”

  “Oh my,” she said.

  “So tell me.”

  “You fell and struck your head. Doctor Harttle said there was a possibility of amnesia, but we—”

  “Wait,” he said. The drugs had begun to take effect; the bed began another slow revolution under him.

  “Darling?”

  Joel licked his lips, fought the drugs. “The man without a face…”

  “Who?” She sounded perplexed.

  “The faceless man,” he repeated. “The one who—”

  “Joel, you were dreaming. What a terrible dream you must have had!” She leaned closer to him, took his face in both her hands and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  “It wasn't a dream,” he said.

  “Certainly it was.”

  “No.”

  “Men without faces? Oh, Joel, just a bad dream. But don't be frightened. I'll be here with you. I won't leave you. I'll be here while you sleep.”

  As she bent closer to him, he saw the full curves of her breasts in the deep vee-neck of her blouse. Her hair brushed his face; it smelled fresh and clean, soapy. Then, dammit, he fell asleep.

  This time when he woke a man stood over him. The stranger was almost as tall as Joel, fifty-five or sixty years old, white-haired. His face was deeply wrinkled but undeniably strong. His laugh lines were like saber slashes. His eyes were wrinkled with dark crinkled skin. His face had character and authority.

  “So you don't remember me either,” he said.

  “No, sir,” Joel said.

  “I don't believe you.”

  Joel shook his head. He still felt drugged. “I'm sorry, but it's true.”

  The stranger sighed, looked at the ceiling, looked at his fingernails, finally turned his eyes on Joel again. “We've sent for Harttle, of course. If you can be helped, he's the one to set you right.”

  Joel sensed the old man's undisguised dislike for him and also understood, somehow, that the antipathy was supposed to be mutual. The old man wanted to be hated. He expected it. Joel struggled with sheets and blankets, sat up, surprised to find that most of his strength had returned. He leaned against the headboard. “Sir, do you think you could bring me into the picture? Who is the woman? And yourself? And who am I, for that matter.”

  The old man wiped at his eyes and brought his hand away from his face as if he had captured his weariness in it. He said, “The woman is Allison, as you very well know.”

  “I don't know,” Joel insisted.

  “She's your wife. You were married a year ago last month — against my wishes.”

  “You?”

  “Must we play this game?”

  “I wish you would.”

  The old man sighed. “I'm her uncle, Henry Galing, her father's only brother.” He puffed up with pride at the mention of his name. “You're Joel Amslow,” he said with no pride at all. More like disdain. Or disgust. “You're a beach bum, a no account, and probably more than a little bit of a gigolo. You're twenty-eight and have never held a full-time job in your life. The only thing you've accomplished is a college degree in literature and a legal marriage to my niece.”

  Joel ignored the challenge. He saw stark, cold hatred in the old man's eyes, but he didn't want to respond to it. He only wanted to get as much information as possible without bogging down in petty arguments. Besides, the hard-jawed old bastard might be telling the truth. He said, “But I must be working now, with a wife to support—”

  Gailing's lips grew taut as bow strings. “You're managing Allison's estate, as you so glibly describe your loafing about.”

  “Estate?”

  “Come off it, Amslow.”

  “No, really—”

  “This whole thing is a trick of some kind,” Galing said curtly. “I don't see the purpose. But you've always been a cunning sonofabitch. I suppose I'll know what you're doing soon enough — when you get whatever else it is you're after.”

  “It's no trick,” Joel said.

  “What isn't?” Allison asked. She stepped through the open bedroom door with a tray of silver dishes all covered with silver lids. A set of silverware was wrapped in a white linen napkin and laid next to a squat, cut crystal goblet that was half-filled with what appeared to be wine.

  “Nothing,” Henry Galing said fiercely. His eyes, as dark as Allison's eyes were blue, were hard, piercing. “It's between Joel and me.” He glanced at his watch and gruffly excused himself, closing the door as he left.

  Unaware of the ugly crosscurrents into which she had stepped, the girl placed the tray across Joel's lap, removed the lids from the dishes, and unrolled the napkin from the silverware. She gave him a dazzling smile and said, “Dinner's everything that you like.”

  The food graced the elegant plates like oil on a master's canvas. She had brought him an enormous steak browned just enough to let him feel civilized, a baked potato, creamed corn, tossed salad, and wine. He had not been hungry until the food was before him, but now he was ravenous. He consumed every morsel and was not content until he leaned back against the headboard and surveyed the empty plates.

  In all that time neither of them had spoken, but Allison had time to think. She said, “Was Uncle Henry going at you again?”

  “Going at me?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “He thinks I'm a gigolo for having married you.”

  “Then your memory's returning?”

  “I'm afraid not,” he said. “I just know what he told me.”

  She was wearing another pair of shorts. These were the color of summer grass, green-yellow, as brief as she ought to dare. She also wore a loose black gypsy blouse with rows of pink buttons down the sleeves. When she moved, the buttons shone: she looked sequined.

  She slid closer to him and took his hand. “What he told you is nonsense.”

  “I'm not a gigolo.”

  “Of course you're not.”

  “He seemed convinced.”

  She grimaced. Her pug nose wrinkled prettily. “He was against our marriage from the start, and you know — but I guess you don't know. It's hard to believe you've forgotten everything,” she said. “Me included.”

  “That's the part I find most impossible to believe myself.” he said.

  She laughed prettily. She had perfect teeth. “Anyway, when you took over my estate and began managing my stock on Galing Research, you soon made an even more bitter enemy of Uncle Henry.”

  “How'd I manage that?” He felt as if all of this were not real but merely the bare lines of a stage play, an act, a dangerous charade.

  “You and several other minority stockholders had the voting potential to go up against Uncle Henry's forty-four per cent, and you did.”

  “I see.”

  “Several times, in fact.”

  He thought about that for a while, but he could not get anywhere with it. Galing Research, voting stock, Henry Galing, even Allison — all these were, if not unreal, certainly unlikely. The real things were the faceless man, the pods, the corpses rotting in the pods…

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You were drifting a thousand miles away,” she said. Worry lines creased her brow. Her eyes moved quickly across his face, and she used one hand to test his forehead for signs of a fever. “You looked lost.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just thinking… Tell me, what does Galing Research research?”

  “Maybe we shouldn't go on with this right now,” she said. “It might be better to see what Dr. Harttle recommends. You're tired, and you should—”

  “I want to go into it,” he said. He smiled and took her hand, sque
ezed it. “I want to remember. Now, what does Galing Research do?”

  “It investigates all facets of parapsychology: telepathy, teleportation, clairvoyance… You name it and Galing has the lead in its development and application.” She was clearly pleased by the family's position of leadership in the industry.

  But it was crazy. Teleportation? Telepathy?

  Joel closed his eyes and pretended he had not heard what he certainly had heard. He suspected, yet again, that he was losing his mind and that all of this was an illusion. But when he opened his eyes he saw she was still sitting on the edge of the bed, her fine long legs tucked under her.

  “Allison, telepathy and clairvoyance — those sort of things aren't sciences. You can't research and apply them.”

  “Whyever not?” She was genuinely perplexed.

  He hesitated, closed his eyes once more. He considered all the holes in his own memory and, doubting himself, he said, “You mean it's been done?”

  “Galing Research did it,” she said. “This is going to be very trying if I've got to convince you of basic truths as well as specific facts. I really think we should wait for the doctor.”

  “No.”

  She sighed and said, “Galing Research markets seventeen drugs that are ESP-talent inducers. You see, we all have extra-sensory abilities, but most of us require drugs to stimulate us into using those powers. I sound like a company brochure.”

  “You've used these drugs?” he asked. “You have telepathic abilities?”

  She was concerned about him, but she was also amused by the question. She laughed, showing lots of white teeth, her throat slim and taut. He wanted to nibble at her throat, kiss it gently — and at the same time he could not understand his instant, animal need for her. There were so many other things on his mind, so many more vital things to think about… Besides, he hardly even knew her, no matter that she was his wife.

  She said: “My telepathic ability is minimal even when it's amplified with drugs. I hear whispers but can't really tell what's being projected. I have two strong abilities, though. One is teleportation on a non-personal level.” She saw his confusion. “That means I can teleport objects from one place to another, but I can't teleport myself. It's handy, but it'd be handier if I had the personal touch. I'd save a lot of travel bills. Anyway, my second talent is in making illusions.”