She didn't move as I went to the door. Before I opened it her
words came softly and with a surprising note of tenderness.
"Goodnight--darling."
13
The trailer was in a slight hollow. From inside, you could see the
white froth along the shore, but when you stepped down to the sand
outside, a smooth ridge cut off the view of the water. I could hear the
smash of a breaker coming in, the receding rattle as it washed back
over a bed of stones. The sound didn't frighten me now. For the moment
the dream had been forgotten. Laurie's last words drifted on the cool
night air, bringing their own tingling warmth.
He struck out of darkness.
I had a split-second of warning, time enough to flinch against the
whiplash of command. It didn't come. The shadow that had moved around
the corner of the trailer closed in on me swiftly, but the blow was not
a sickening mental force. It was a clumsily swinging fist that skidded
painfully off my shoulder as I dodged. I heard a choking sob.
"Damn you!"
The white blob of a fist arched toward me and smashed against my jaw.
I was caught off balance. Falling, I had a strange floating sensation.
My cheek was numb. Even on the soft sand, the fall was jolting, and for
a second I couldn't move. The figure stood panting over me and I saw
blond hair caught in the slanting light from Laurie's window.
"Get up!" he raged. "Damn you, get up and fight!"
I laughed. Fear fell away from me and the reaction of relief was so
intense that there was no room for anger or pain or even surprise.
Jenkins! The jealous youth who had warned me to keep away from his girl.
The laughter enraged him even more. He dove on top of me. I rolled as
his lean hard body slammed against me. His fingers tore at my chest,
reaching for my throat. I fought back automatically, not really wanting
to fight, desiring merely to stop this foolishness, yet instinctively
defending myself. My flailing arm banged against the side of his
head. He grunted. For an instant the pressure of his hold weakened. I
wrenched free and tumbled away from him.
He came to his feet more quickly than I did. I was still in a crouch
when he stepped in and brought up his knee in a short, vicious piston
stroke. It exploded against my chin. My head snapped back and I toppled
backwards like a limber doll.
"I'll kill you!" he snarled.
Still I felt neither anger nor fright. There was a fleeting sense of
alarm, of recognition that here was a real threat, something that had
to be stopped, not just a laughable mistake. And there was pain. Blood
filled my mouth and my jaw was bruised and throbbing. But everything
was clear and rational and without emotion.
Somehow I got to my feet again. Absurdly the thought crossed my mind
that he wasn't playing the game according to the rules. You weren't
supposed to kick a man when he was down, you shouldn't use your knee at
all. Then there was no more time for reflection. He rushed at me, fists
pumping, and I managed to sidestep. He whirled and came at me again.
His fist grazed the top of my head. I punched back, hitting for the
vulnerable stomach, hoping only to slow him down. I wasn't breathing
very well and I was aware of blood streaming from my nose.
We fought standing up now, without speaking, the thud of a blow echoed
by a grunt or a gasp, our breathing loud and wheezing. My arms began to
feel leaden where they had caught the heavy impact of his fists.
"Don't be a damned fool!" I gasped.
"I warned you!"
I was wearing down, like a mechanical doll wound up and now nearing the
end of its dance, beginning to slow, each jerky movement more labored,
more artificial. He was younger, in better condition, harder, stronger,
more rested. I saw the end coming. His blows broke through my barriers
of elbow and shoulder more frequently. He must have sensed that I was
weakening and he pressed his attack more savagely.
I went down again, not so much from one blow as from an accumulation
of them. The thought came dimly to me that I had no hope of winning
because my heart wasn't in it. I didn't care. I had no sense of being a
warrior battling for my love against the evil knight. I was apathetic.
I fought only because I had to defend myself. It had nothing to do with
Laurie, nothing to do with courage or honor.
Without knowing how or why, I was on my feet again, aiming for the flat
hard stomach, oblivious of the knotted fist that slashed across my
cheek as I drove in, not knowing why I persisted in this futile form of
resistance.
A scream ripped across the darkness. Out of the corner of my eye I saw
Laurie standing in a pool of light at the front of the trailer. The cry
must have stopped Jenkins. I was already driving in, smashing my fist
into the only target I knew, the unguarded stomach. He gave a short,
emphatic grunt.
Laurie cried out again and rushed toward us. Jenkins sagged backwards
and sat down hard. I stood over him, swaying, and spat blood onto the
sand.
"My God! What are you doing, Paul? Why?"
"He started it," I mumbled childishly.
Jenkins said nothing. He sat where he had dropped, doubled over, his
fists pressed into his stomach. I heard a strangled sound as he tried
to suck air into his lungs.
Laurie began to cry. I stared at her stupidly. It seemed to be too much
trouble to speak again.
"You--you bully!" she choked through tears. "Why did you have to fight
him? You didn't have to!"
It would take too long to explain. She really ought to understand that
I hadn't wanted to fight. I couldn't explain it all to her now.
She sank to her knees beside Jenkins. "Oh, Bob," she said soothingly.
"You're hurt." She glared up at me. "Why do you always have to spoil
things? Just when everything was so perfect, why--oh, go away! I never
want to see you again!"
She held him gently, pressing his bent head against her bosom like a
mother cradling her child. I wanted to tell her that he wasn't really
hurt. I was the one who was hurt. Every bone in my body was broken.
He'd only had the breath knocked out of him.
But I knew she wouldn't listen, and the effort of trying to convince
her didn't seem worthwhile. Nothing mattered. I was dead tired and
aching and very old.
Turning, I staggered away across the sand.
14
I sat in the little aluminum car for a long time. I don't know how
long. The numbness slowly left my chest and arms and face, clearing the
way for a thousand jabbing needles of pain. But the emotional numbness,
the dull apathy, remained.
A fight shouldn't wreck you like this, I thought. At twenty-seven you
aren't exactly an old man. Weren't you supposed to reach your physical
peak at that age?
Why had I felt no real anger? The unemotional, automatic resistance
during the fight was abnormal. My feeling now of being drained and
empty was disproportionate. A reaction to the weeks of strain, perhaps,
with the physical beating I had taken providing the finishing blows.
Or did it go deeper than that? My reaction to Laurie was not normal
either. The emotional pendulum was swinging far too wide at both ends
of its arc. I was not a kid any more, not an unstable adolescent.
Kissing a young and beautiful girl was not a unique, soul-shattering
experience. The moment's passion with Laurie had meant too much.
Granted she was no ordinary girl, and in my self-imposed isolation I
had not been leading what could be called a full and satisfying sex
life. Yet neither of these facts seemed to account fully for the highly
charged, volatile reaction I had had to her on the two occasions we had
been alone for a few minutes.
Could she be exercising some unnatural influence?
As I examined the thought a feeling of disgust welled up in me. It
won't work, I thought dully, the revulsion itself a gray, listless
emotion. Laurie is dangerous only if you're afraid of love, timid
in the face of a strong relationship. She is not a monster. Nor is
Jenkins. He had his opportunity right there on the beach in the
darkness. It would have been easy for him to use the brutal force of
a super-mind instead of awkward fists. He could have done it before
Laurie heard the sounds of fighting and came out. It could have been
done as it was in the dream. "Drown! Drown yourself!" And no one would
have known how or why it happened.
No. Not Jenkins, not Laurie, not Helen Darrow or Mike Boyle. It had
to be one of these and it was none of them. So I could no longer hide
behind my bizarre delusion. There were no aliens. There was no enemy
but the one who hid inside me. Myself.
And yet--there was one fact which was not imaginary. Lois Worthington
had died. She had seen the man in the back booth, I had tried to reach
her, and she had been brutally murdered. This fact was all too real.
And the vision I had had so long ago of my father's death, that could
not be dismissed or explained away now. That too had happened. At the
time I was able to believe in coincidence. No longer.
Moreover, if the aliens existed only as part of an elaborate delusion
of persecution, if whispered voices were hallucinations, there should
have been accompanying symptoms before this, evidence of a greater
deterioration of my thinking. But nothing else had changed. The world
looked the same to me. I didn't even have to look far for a plausible
explanation of my abrupt swings from apathy to extreme emotionalism.
This instability could logically be accounted for by the unnatural
pressures of fear and worry.
Dubiously I examined the evidence for and against the existence of the
aliens. The structure of argument on which I could support belief in my
sanity was weak, thin-walled, its foundations shallow. I closed my mind
to shelter it against the winds of fact and logic.
* * * * *
I drove slowly away from the beach trailer community. There had been no
sign of Laurie or Jenkins while I sat in the car. Some of the pain in
my bruised body had subsided. Nothing after all had been broken except
the tip of one tooth whose nerve throbbed like a hot wire in my jaw.
My clothes were torn and bloody and the skin had been ripped off my
knuckles, but otherwise I had come out of the fight in fair shape. The
bruises would turn yellow and finally fade away, new skin would cover
the knuckles, the puffiness around one eye would disappear, a plastic
cap would disguise the broken tooth.
I glanced at the time dial on the instrument panel. It was not yet
eleven o'clock. Still early. The forty-eight hours which had passed
since the voices drew me across the campus toward the Dugout seemed
more like endless weeks. Time had lost its meaning.
At this hour the shoreline road along which I moved was relatively
deserted. Only an occasional car approached me along the outbound
lanes. My pace was slow and one or two cars accelerated to pass me.
The headlights of another slow-moving car bobbed in my rear view
telescreen. Out on the causeway over the water traffic was much
heavier, a glittering pattern of speeding lights.
A cat darted away from the side of the road. My foot jammed down in
a sudden reflex action. I swerved sharply. For a second, the cat
disappeared under the hood of the car and I felt a quick tension in
expectation of the thump of contact. Then the cat reappeared, somehow
having eluded the squealing tires, and I straightened the car. It had
slowed almost to a crawl.
Accelerating, I glanced automatically into the rear view screen. The
headlights of the car behind me were exactly the same distance away
they had been before. For a moment I stared dully at the screen, not
comprehending the significance of the other car's movement, yet aware
that something was wrong. Understanding came slowly and, with it,
the first bright streak of emotion to penetrate the gray cloud which
enveloped me, a quick pulsation of fear.
I drove faster, climbing swiftly up from thirty to fifty miles an hour.
The headlights remained steady on the screen, keeping pace. The car was
following me.
There was a frozen moment when reality slipped away from me. I was
aware of a creeping coldness, like the cutting chill of a damp wind,
penetrating until my flesh crawled and my teeth began to chatter
uncontrollably. Somehow I kept the car on the road in its lane,
maintaining the same speed. Then I saw the lights staring at me like
eyes from the screen and I came out of my horrified trance with a jolt.
I had lost precious seconds. My foot jammed down and the little car
leaped forward, the purr of its engine rising to a steady whine. The
hills on my left side were a blur, and the clustered trailers on the
ocean side of the road zipped past me with slapping wind sounds. I was
approaching a speed of a hundred miles an hour and I had to fight to
keep the light car on the road. It seemed to bounce and leap, hardly
touching the ground.
And there were the headlights, dancing and winking on the small screen.
The needle of the speedometer touched a hundred, edged past it--and at
that instant I knew that I had played right into the pursuer's hands.
This was what he wanted. This was to be the accident.
I slammed on the power brakes. They held, grinding loudly, while the
car dipped and veered sharply, sliding into a skid.
"Release the brake!"
The thought cracked across my mind like the blow of a club. Momentarily
stunned, I still kept my foot on the brake. The car was skidding
dangerously now and the wheel seemed to have a life of its own,
twisting and jumping in my hands. The scream of tires was like a cry of
terror. But the car's speed had dropped swiftly.
"Release it!"
Sweat started on my forehead and under my arms. For a long moment my
mind was locked in conflict with the force that tried to break it.
Then, as if it were a wooden appendage attached to me but out of my
control, my leg jerked. The car rolled free.
"Drive faster!"
I started to obey automatically as if the command had been my own,
the message swiftly telegraphed from brain to foot. Anger brought
resistance. I concentrated on steering the slowing car, trying to shut
my mind, to create a blank wall of stubborn resistance. The muscles in
my legs jerked with tension.
"Faster!" The word broke through like one of Jenkins' fists smashing
through my feeble guard.
And, while my hands clenched the wheel until they ached, my foot inched
inexorably toward the accelerator, nudged it, clamped down. The car
lurched forward with gathering speed. A crushing weight of defeat made
me slump on the seat. Tears of frustration blurred my vision of the
road ahead. The speedometer climbed rapidly. A car's horn blasted and
I swerved from the middle of the road back into my lane. I caught a
glimpse of a red, angry face flashing past. The familiar headlights
winked in the rear view screen like the eyes of the alien whose power
had smashed through my flimsy barrier of resistance. Despair twisted
like a fist in my stomach.
"Faster!" The voice that spoke in my mind was cold, unmoved, arrogant
in its knowledge of power.
And I obeyed, letting myself relax, trying to ease the aching muscles
of my arms and legs, not thinking about what I was going to do or what
was about to happen to me. The speedometer's needle began to waver
erratically above one hundred and ten miles an hour.
"Faster! Faster!"
The one word, repeated over and over, drumming in my brain until it
obliterated thought. I was an automaton, steering the lurching, whining
car along the blurred ribbon of road, a puppet controlled by tenuous
strings of mental force, a wooden puppet without will or thought of its
own, dumbly responding to the master's word.
And at last it came, the command, so dreaded in the deep recesses of my
consciousness that protest shrieked in my mind, breaking me out of the
stupor.
"Turn the wheel!"
And in that instant, when the immediate pull of obedience was almost
overwhelming, a final frenzied cry of defiance was heard. I saw ahead
the slanting curve of a ramp shooting out toward the ocean causeway.
For long agonizing seconds I held out against the pressure--and when
my hands moved on the wheel it was at that precise and last possible
second which sent the car careening onto the ramp and into a long
banked curve.
The maneuver caught my pursuer by surprise. There was a brief,
bewildered respite before the clear cold voice spoke again, stamping
out the elation that gripped me. The line of the causeway beckoned, so
near now, less than a quarter of a mile away--
"Turn! Turn now!"
And I had spent the last remaining reserve of strength to resist. My
hands obeyed. I spun the wheel.
The little car bounced off the low parapet at the edge of the ramp,
kicked back out of control and shot across the narrow cement strip, its
tail beginning a slow fishtailing motion, sliding into a spin. The low
barrier on the other side of the ramp loomed up swiftly and I cringed
against the impact--
And the car was caught by a sudden jerk that slammed me against the
door with bone-jarring force. I felt the invisible electronic fingers
of the automatic road controls grasping at the car, pulling it back,
fighting against the momentum that carried it forward. Hope leaped in
my chest. I had made it!
For a flashing second the car seemed to hang suspended, caught between
the conflicting forces, and I was aware of the speeding lanes of
traffic on the causeway now so near to me, of the whirling canopy of
the star-stabbed sky, of the gray cold water surging far below. But
the car's momentum had been too great. The plucking fingers of the
electronic ribbon imbedded in the road slipped and lost their hold. The
car's left front wheel and fender hit the parapet.
And the car was in mid-air, leaping the low wall and tumbling end over
end in a long, soaring arc of flight, plummeting down, down, to smash
at last into the wall of water. The wall broke and crashed around me
and I plunged through it into a vast, unending pool of darkness.
15
Faces swam through the water, distorted and shimmering. There was a
distant roaring in my ears like the clamor of the sea trapped in a
seashell. The din faded away gradually and in the immensity of silence
I waited shivering for the unseen force that would grip my mind.
"It's a miracle!" someone said clearly.
My eyelids pushed open like dusty blinds. I saw the faces again,
blurred like a picture slightly out of focus but much sharper than
before. I remembered an earlier awakening when five pairs of eyes had
stared down at me in open curiosity and I had flinched in fear. Or had
it all been a dream from which I was only now awakening?
"Don't move," a man said.
I had no intention of moving. My head ached and there was a deep
throbbing in my arm, extending from a point near the shoulder down past
the elbow, a throbbing not really painful but curiously electric and
tingling.
I closed my eyes and re-opened them. There were two pairs of eyes, set
in two faces which were quite clear. A man and a woman, middle-aged or
older. Strangers. The man's hair was steel grey and very wet against
his skull. The woman looked like a bird. She bent toward me and I had
the momentary impression that she was going to peck at me with her
long, sharply-pointed nose.
"Can you hear us?" she asked in a thin, piping voice. "Do you know what
we're saying?"
"Yes."
I thought I spoke aloud but she continued to watch me expectantly.
Behind her the sky was black and the fact surprised me. I had somehow
expected hot sunlight and a hard blue sky.
"Henry pulled you out of the car," the woman said. "We saw it happen."
I heard a breaker topple over and the swish-swish of two cars passing
on the highway. Then I remembered.
"The voice!" I cried. "Turn the wheel!"