He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with
the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let
them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his
scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he
would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so
as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the
insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the
switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so
many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone
knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps
the whole world is dead--except for us."
Harry stared at him.
* * * * *
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just
three of us--myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should
have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and
where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run
a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but
how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The
people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me
more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone
else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to
reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have
known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in
the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because
I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the
catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to
survive." He laughed, high and thin.