The Long Sleep Page 5

  He tried to force the door open on his side so that they could escape the wreckage before Galing showed up, but the door had been welded tight by the crash. He struggled with it for a long moment before leaning back in his harness. Calm down. Take it easy. He relaxed, trying to gather his wits, and he listened to the sigh of hot metal cooling down. Fluid dripped out of a ruptured line and hissed as it splashed on hot steel, and he could smell a thin but acrid smoke that rose out of the undercarriage.

  Suddenly the door which he had struggled vainly to open was now opened easily, and he was confronted by the faceless man. Dark hair had fallen across the blank countenance. Hanging upside down in the overturned shuttle, supported by the safety harness, Joel had a strange view of the specter, on which made its featureless face seem even more hideous.

  “Go away, he said. He closed his eyes, hoping to wake up, though he knew this dream just wouldn't go away.

  “You didn't get far,” the specter said.

  “You can't talk. You've got no mouth. I won't listen to you talk!” He knew he was slipping into hysteria, but he could not help it.

  “I'm the sandman,” the specter said.

  Joel opened his eyes.

  The faceless man raised a chalky hand. Hundreds of tiny silver needles protruded from the palm in evenly spaced rows. They gleamed.

  “No!” Joel said.

  “The sandman.”

  The specter reached out, touched him.

  A cloud of steam hissed out of the undercarriage, whirled through the car, obscuring everything for one brief instant.

  “Ill get you,” Joel said. “Ill get all of you.”

  The sandman touched him again. The needles were cold and they stung.

  At least he now knew that the creature's power was not at all supernatural. Of course, the knowledge did nothing to hearten him — or to save him. He fell asleep again, against his will…

  VIII

  Joel activated half a dozen data transmitters. Turning slightly in his chair he read the life systems reports on experimental subject Sam-3. The display screens brought in nothing but good news:

  heartbeat: 51 per minute

  respiration: 8 per minute

  encephalographic patterns: all within

  ACCEPTABLE PERIMETERS

  digestion/primary stomach: balance

  PERFECTED

  digestion/secondary stomach: slight

  degree of acidity. systems coping

  He looked through the thick observation window which was placed at eye level in the wall before him, directly above the deck of controls. The pool was only minimally lighted now. The aquamen were just barely visible, quick shadows flickering in the green light.

  He picked up his microphone and directed Sam-3 to approach his observation point.

  A moment later the aquaman swam into view. He had a quasi-human face, lots of wicked teeth, and he was smiling. Five feet long (one could not say “tall", for that implied that he stood erect; and he never stood erect), with the legs and arms of a man but with the sleekness of a porpoise, Sam-3 was quite a sight. His feet and hands were twice as large as those of a land-bound man, his digits connected by filmy webbing. His neck was marked by six gill slits on each side, spaced close and angled toward his throat from the atrophied flaps of his ears. His eyes were exceptionally large and shielded by transparent lids. He passed the viewpoint and glided away, feet gracefully churning water.

  “Get's boring, doesn't it?” Henry Galing asked.

  Joel looked at the older man who was in the chair next to his, and he saw why Galing had once given up a fine career in genetic science to run for political office. Wealthy, handsome, dignified, with a confident manner that brooked no debate, he was a father image in whom the voters could place at least psychological confidence. And he wasn't just an image; he was extremely capable. He would have done well by those who elected him — if he'd had a chance to assume office before everything fell apart and the continuation of an elected, democratic government was no longer feasible. However, if mankind had lost a statesman it had gained a superior genetic theorist whose talents were now desperately necessary for the many projects at hand.

  “If I were director of the department,” Joel said, “I wouldn't spend time sitting at a console, like you do. It is boring.”

  “But we're short of good technicians,” Galing said. “I'd rather take an extra shift myself than load it onto someone who has already done twelve hours at the monitors. Besides, I've been taking a few inhibitors, and I don't need more than two hours sleep a night.”

  “Inhibitors are dangerous,” Joel said.

  “I know what makes an overdose.”

  “But even without an overdose… How long can the body go without sleep — without enough sleep?”

  “A year,” Galing said.

  “And how long have you been taking them?”

  “Only the last few weeks,” Galing said. “A year… And after that, what does it matter? I suppose we'll still be living here a year from now. But we'll just be waiting for the end. With luck though, our children will have started their journeys, leaving us behind…”

  They both looked into the pool beyond the observation windows. The aquamen swam by and stared in at them as if the roles in this zoo had changed.

  And maybe they had changed at that, Joel thought. It was the aquamen who were going out to the stars, taking the wider universe for their home — while he and Galing and the rest of them were forced to remain behind in the bunkers.

  Turning away from the ports, Galing said, “How about you and Anita stopping by my suite for supper tonight. Something simple, a little wine.”

  “It's okay with me,” Joel said. “If Anita—”

  “I'll ask her,” Galing said. He looked past Joel, down the row of black command chairs. “Anita! Supper tonight? Fine!” He turned back to Joel. “It's all set, then.”

  Joel turned and looked at Anita, his raven-haired wife. She was sitting in the fifth chair down from his; she wore a white smock and worked the controls in front of her. She gave him a quick smile, a wink, then returned to her monitors. That was when it all fell apart fast…

  He had seen nothing particularly unusual in the rest of it, nothing that seemed false. He had accepted Galing as a genetic scientist instead of a researcher in the paranormal sciences. But he could not fit the woman in the illusion. Delusion? Whatever this was, her name was not Anita. It was… Allison. Or was it? Yes. Oh, yes, Allison Amslow. His wife, Galing's niece. And all the rest of this was wrong too, he now saw. Henry Galing wasn't so friendly as this…

  He stood up.

  “Joel?” Galing said.

  “Bastards!”

  “Hey, Joel, what's gotten into you?”

  He stepped away from his chair and ran to the door which opened on the “pool” beyond the wall, the door through which he had come after leaving the pod a long, long time ago. It wasn't precisely the same door as it had been; now, it was a heavy steel pressure hatch of the sort you found in submarines. However, when he tugged on it, the door opened without admitting water to the observation room.

  No pool existed.

  No aquamen.

  The “pool” was actually that white-walled, dust-filmed chamber in the basement of the building. Sixteen life support pods stood in neat rows.

  Stepping into the room, he looked at the observation windows from the end. A back-projecting hologram machine — just like the projector at his bedroom window in Galing's mansion — had been attached to the inside of each window; the underwater scene which he had been monitoring was a fake.

  He started toward the pods, not sure what he intended to do when he reached them. Touching them would be enough. Rapping his knuckles on them would satisfy him. If he could climb up the side of one of them and peer in at the corpse, he would be delighted. Just knowing they were real and not a part of some dream—

  “Joel!”

  He turned and looked at Henry Galing.

  The old
man was standing in the doorway between the two rooms. “Come here,” he said.

  “Go to hell.”

  A second figure appeared in the doorway, crowding Galing. “Do what he tells you,” the faceless man said. He raised one hand and beckoned as if he were talking to a child. “Come here.”

  Joel turned away from them and walked over to the cylinders. He rapped his knuckles against them, listened to the hollow echoes. They were real enough.

  “You can't escape,” the faceless man said.

  Turning, Joel saw the specter immediately behind him, four short steps away. It was dressed in a one-piece black suit as before, hands sheathed in black leather. It took another step and raised one needle-filled palm.

  Joel retreated, bumped into the huge cylinder, fell down, and rolled across the concrete floor. He scrambled desperately to his feet again and put one of the life support pods between himself and his unearthly adversary.

  “You can play tag with me if you want,” the creature said, placing both hands flat on the pod and leaning toward Joel who was on the other side of it. “But you can't win. Do you see? You have no chance.”

  They circled the pod warily.

  “Who are you?” Joel asked.

  “I'm the sandman.”

  “What are you?”

  “I'm the sandman.”

  “That's no answer.”

  “It's all the answer you'll get.”

  The faceless man suddenly dropped to his knees and scuttled under the cylinder, making a pass at Joel's legs.

  Joel swung out of the way and ran to another pod, took refuge behind it, more watchful than ever.

  “Where are we?” he asked the specter when it followed him and took up the game once more.

  “Nowhere.”

  Without eyes but evidently not without sight, the incredible specter watched him, moved as he moved, gave him no advantage whatsoever.

  “Is this really the Twenty-third Century?” Joel asked.

  “Who told you that?” The voice seemed to emanate from the lower third of the featureless face, from the spot where a mouth ought to have been. Joel thought he saw the smooth flesh vibrate slightly, like the head of a snare drum trembling with a staccato rhythm.

  “Harttle,” Joel said. “He told me.”

  “Why should you care what year it is?'

  “Tell me.”

  “Time doesn't matter,” the sandman said.

  “It matters to me.”

  At the far end of the room, Henry Galing and the manservant Richard, walked out of the doorway from the observation chamber and started toward the pods. Joel saw them, and he knew that the man without a face was one hundred percent right: he had no chance at all, not even a slender thread of hope.

  “You don't have anything to gain by resisting us,” the faceless man said.

  “Self-respect,” Joel said.

  “Not even that.”

  Galing and Richard reached the pod and started around one end of it.

  The specter came around the other end.

  “You stay back. All of you.”

  Richard was grinning.

  “I'll kill one of you if I get the chance.”

  “You won't,” Galing said.

  The old man held up his right hand and showed Joel the needled glove. Richard was wearing one of them too.

  They descended on him in a rush. He didn't know which of them touched him first. Darkness came quickly, in a roar of silence.

  IX

  He woke and found that a rat was worrying at his shoe. It was a big sonofabitch, maybe ten or twelve pounds, long, wide, low to the ground. The long, black, pebbled tail trailed from it, motionless on the floor. The fur on its haunches was dark gray, the color of summer thunderheads; but it grew progressively lighter on up the body until it was a washed out and indefinable dirty color around the neck and head. The ears were thin, pointed, laid flat: listening. The quick red eyes were intent on the shoe, and the sharp yellow teeth shaved the shoe leather like razors stropping a bar of soap. Joel watched it until, sensing that he was awake, it peered up at him. For a moment they stared hard at each other, testing each other, gauging possibilities… When he moved to strike it, the rat turned and ran into the shadows on the other side of the room.

  Had it been real — or part of some new illusion?

  He sat up, stretched, and groaned. He was sore all over. His neck was stiff, his shoulders knotted with pain, his back filled with a dull ache where it had come into contact with the hard mattress of the floor.

  When he finally looked carefully at the room, he was surprised to find himself in a cell. The walls were made from huge blocks of stone, granite or perhaps lava rock. The mortar between the blocks was brown, thin, perfectly spread, the work of a master mason who relied more on the fitting of stone than on the glue that lay between them. The ceiling was also stone. He could see no light fixtures except for the sputtering candle propped in a shallow baking pan by the door. He had been allowed no furniture, not even a straw sleeping mat. The only door was a massive slab of oak with three iron hinges; the eight-inch-square window in the center of it was fitted with four thick iron bars which were welded into an iron frame.

  He got to his feet, leaned against the wall until a brief but intense fit of vertigo passed. Circumspectly, afraid that someone might be listening for him at the other side of the oak, he went to the door and peered through the bars. Beyond lay a musty, candle-lit concrete-walled hallway. In the flickering orange light, he saw that the corridor ceiling contained lightstrips which were no longer functioning.

  The hall was empty. So far as he could see, no one was guarding the door.

  Hooking his fingers in the bars, he tried unsuccessfully to swing the door open. Locked. Of course. What else was he to expect of a prison cell?

  He considered calling for help. But he knew there'd be no one to hear him — except those who'd put him here: Galing, Richard, the man without a face…

  But what the hell? He had nothing to lose. They'd come for him sooner or later anyway. “Hey! Hey, I'm awake now.”

  No one answered.

  “Let's get on with it,” he said.

  The hall was quiet, empty. Somewhere nearby, a steady trickle of water gurgled softly over stone.

  His fingers still hooked in the bars, he tried to recall all that had happened since he'd first awakened on that hydraulic couch in the pod chamber. Maybe there was a clue in it, a pattern, some thread that would let him unravel the whole ball of yarn. First: the deserted laboratories, filmed with dust. Then: the empty labs and offices, the skeleton, the faceless man, bed, Allison, escape from the house, the shuttle wreck, waking up in the fake aquaman experimental station, the discovery of that hoax, the faceless man again… No. It was useless. Senseless.

  Turning away from the door, he explored his meager cell more carefully than he had first done. The only thing that he had overlooked was a two-foot-square drain in the center of the floor. It opened on a black pit and was laid over with iron grill work. The rat had probably entered and left through the drain, but that was not going to do him any good. He wasn't going to be rescued by any sewer-patroling cavalry.

  Behind him a key rattled in the lock.

  He turned quickly.

  Henry Galing pushed open the door. He was silhouetted by the brighter glow of the corridor candles, but Joel recognized even his silhouette. Galing came into the cell where Joel could get a better look at him. He was wearing a white smock that fell to his knees, and he carried a black satchel that resembled Dr. Harttle's bag of instruments. He smiled broadly and said, “Well, well… How are we doing this morning, young man.”

  Joel stared at him.

  “Don't you remember me?” Galing asked. He sounded genuinely concerned. “I'm Galing. Your doctor.”

  “The angel of mercy,” Joel said sarcastically. He put his back to the stone wall. His arms hung at his sides, and his hands were fisted. “What have you done to me?”

  Galing
did not retreat but moved farther into the room so that Richard could get by him. Richard was dressed in a hospital orderly's uniform, all soft blue cotton and as clean as new diapers. A darker blue surgeon's cap covered most of his skull. He was wearing heavy rubber-soled shoes that squeaked when he walked.

  “Just be calm,” Galing said.

  “Go to hell.” He knew he was being childish, but he was hungry for revenge, even for the petty revenge of minor disobedience and surliness.

  “Now,” Galing said consolingly. “You don't want Richard to hurt you again.”

  Richard was carrying a battery-operated electric prod. He smiled slightly as Joel stared at the ugly device. Richard wouldn't hesitate to use it.

  “I asked you what you've done to me,” Joel said, turning back to Galing.

  The old man looked sad, as if he had to reprimand a favorite child. “I haven't done anything yet. What I'm trying to do is cure you, my boy.”

  Behind Galing and Richard, Allison appeared in the doorway. She paused for a moment as if she knew what a stunning picture she made even in silhouette, then stepped to her uncle's side. Her long hair was drawn back from her face and tied in a bun. She was wearing a white uniform and a peaked nurse's cap. Even in the stark institutional dress she was curvacious, sensuous.

  “Ah, Annabelle, my dear,” Galing said. He gave her a fatherly kiss on the cheek. “I want you to watch me with Mr. Amslow so that you've some experience in the handling of this sort of patient.”

  “Yes, doctor,” she said, glancing quickly at Joel as if he were a curious insect.

  “He's unusual. We get very few like him,” Galing said.

  She said, “I'm always anxious to learn, doctor.”

  Galing looked at Joel again, and he was no longer smiling. “Cooperate, and you won't be hurt,” he said.

  Joel frowned. “Her name isn't Annabelle,”

  Galing nodded sagely, the holy doctor probing at the twisted mind of the patient. “Why do you say that?”

  “Her name's Allison.”

  “It is?”

  “And she's my wife!”

  The woman sucked in her breath, put one hand over her breasts. Her eyes were round with fright.