* * * * *
More tests, more tests. Hear a sound, punch a button. See a picture,
record it. Test after endless test, dozens of records, his brain
growing tired, tired. Then into the bright, gleaming room, up onto the
green-draped table.
"No pain, Jeff, nothing to worry about. Be over in just a minute."
His eyes caught the slender, wicked-looking trefine; he heard the buzz
of the motor, felt the grinding shock. But there was no reaction, no
pain. And then he felt a curious tingling in his arms and legs, as the
small electro-encephalograph end-plates entered his skull through the
tiny drilled holes.
He watched with dull eyes as the little lights on the control board
nearby began blinking on and off, on and off. The flashes followed a
hectic, nervous pattern, registering individual brain-cell activity
onto supersensitive stroboscopic film. This, in turn, was fed down
automatically to Tilly for analysis. And then the trefine holes were
plugged up again and his head was tightly taped, and he was moved back
into another room for another five-minute recovery.
"Hit the ink blots yet?"
"Not yet, Rog. Take it easy, we're coming along. Ink blots and
intelligence runs next, and so on."
Something stirred deep in Jeff's mind, even through the soothing
delusions of hypnosis. It stirred and cried out at the first sign of
the strange, colored forms on the cards. Something deep in Jeff's mind
forced its way out to his lips as Dr. Gabriel said softly, "Just look
at them, Jeff, and tell me what you see."
"No! Take them away."
"What's that? Gently, Jeff. Relax and take a look."
Jeff was on his feet, backing away, a wild, helpless, cornered fire in
his eyes. "Take them away. Get me out of here. Go away--"
"Jeff!" The voice was sharp, commanding. "Sit down, Jeff."
Jeff sank down in the seat, gingerly, eyes wary. The doctor moved his
hand and Jeff jumped a foot, his teeth chattering.
"What's the matter, Jeff?"
"I--I don't like ... those ... cards."
"But they're only ink blots, Jeff."
Jeff frowned and squinted at the cards. He scratched his head in
perplexity. Slowly he sank back down in the chair, didn't even notice
as the web-belt restrainers closed over his arms and legs, tightened
down.
"Now look at the pictures, Jeff. Tell me what you see."
The perplexity grew on his heavy face, but he looked and talked,
slowly, hoarsely. A dog's head, a little gnome, a big red bat.
"Gently, Jeff. Nothing to be afraid of. Relax, man, relax...."
Then came the word-association tests: half an hour of words and
answers, while fear curled up through Jeff's brain, gathering,
crouching, ready to spring, waiting in horrible anticipation for
something, something that was coming as sure as hour followed hour.
Jeff felt the web restrainers cutting his wrists, as the words were
read. He trembled in growing foreboding.
Dr. Schiml's face was back, still concerned, his eyes bright. "Going
all right, Gabe?"
"Dunno, Rog. Something funny with the ink blots. You can glance at the
report. Word association all screwed up too. Can't spot it, but there's
something funny."
"Give him a minute's rest and reinforce the palamine. Probably got a
powerful vitality opposing it."
Dr. Gabriel was back in a moment, and another needle nibbled Jeff's
arm briefly. Then the doctor walked to the desk, took out the small,
square plastic box. He dropped the cards out into his hand. They were
plain-backed little cards with bright red symbols on their faces.
Dr. Gabriel held them under Jeff's nose. "Rhine cards," he said softly.
"Four different symbols, Jeff. Look close. A square, a circle...."
_It was like a gouge, jammed down through Jeff's mind, ripping it
without mercy. A red-hot, steaming poker was being rammed into the
soft, waxy tissue of his brain._
"My God, hold him!"
Jeff screamed, wide awake, his eyes bulging with terror. With an
animal-like roar he wrenched at his restrainers, ripped them out of the
raw wood and plunged across the room in blind, terrified flight. He ran
across the room and struck the solid brick wall full face. He hit with
a sickening thud, pounded at the wall with his fists, screaming out
again and again. And then he collapsed to the floor, his nose broken,
his face bleeding, his fingers raw with the nails broken.
And as he slid into merciful unconsciousness, they heard him
blubbering: "He killed my father ... killed him ... killed him ...
killed him ... killed him...."
* * * * *
Hours later he stirred. He almost screamed out in pain as he tried to
move his arm. His chest burned as he breathed. When he opened his eyes,
an almost unbearable, pounding ache struck down through his skull. He
recognized his room, saw the empty bed across from him. Then he raised
an arm, felt the bandaging around his face, his neck.
He listened fearfully and his ears caught only the harsh, gurgling
breathing of the man in the next room: the man called Tinker, whose
doom as a Mercy Man had not been quite sealed, who breathed on,
shallowly, breaking the deadly silence.
_What had happened?_
Jeff sat bolt upright in the darkness, ignoring the stabbing pain
that shot through his chest and neck. What had happened? Why was he
bandaged? What was the meaning of the pure, naked, paralyzing fear that
was gripping him like a vise? He stared through the darkness at the
opposite bed, and blinked. What had happened ... what ... what?
Of course. He had been in the file room. He'd been caught. Schiml had
caught him and he had been taken down for testing. And then: _a bright
light, nonsense words in his ear, a needle...._
Gasping with pain, Jeff rolled out of bed, searched underneath for his
shoes. With an audible sob, he retrieved the crumpled card from under
the inner sole. Then they hadn't gotten the card. They didn't know. But
what could have happened? Slowly, other things came back: there had
been a scream; he had felt a shock, as though molten lead had been sent
streaming through his veins, and then he had struck the wall like a
ten-ton truck.
He groped for his watch, stared at it, hardly believing his eyes. It
read seven P.M. It had been almost one A.M. when they had taken him
down to Dr. Gabriel. It couldn't be seven in the evening again. Unless
he had slept around the clock. He listened to the watch; it was still
running. Whatever had happened had thrown him, thrown him so hard that
he had slept for almost twenty-four hours. And in the course of that
time....
The horrible loss struck him suddenly, worming its way through to
open realization. Twenty-four hours later--a day gone, a whole day
for Conroe to use to move deeper into hiding. He sank back on the bed
and groaned, despair heavy in his mind. A day gone, a precious day.
Somewhere the man was in the Center. But to locate him now, after he
had had such time--how could Jeff do it?
He felt a greater urgency now. No matter what they had found in the
testing, he had no time left to hunt. The next step on this one-way
road was assignment and the signing of a release--the point of no
return.
And through it all, something ate at his mind: some curious question,
some phantom he could not pin down, a shadow figure which loomed up
again and again in his mind, haunting him--the shadow of fearful doubt.
Why the shock? Why had he broken loose? What had driven him to punish
his arms and legs so mercilessly on the restrainers? What monstrous
demon had torn loose in his mind? What gaping sore had the doctors
scraped over to drive him to such extremes of fear and horror? _And
why was the same feeling there in his mind whenever he thought of Paul
Conroe?_
He sighed. He needed help and he knew it. He needed help desperately.
Here, in a whirlpool of hatred and selfishness, he needed help more
than he had ever needed it, help to track down this phantom shadow,
help to corner it, to kill it. And the only ones he could ask for help
were those around him, the Mercy Men themselves. He needed their help,
if only to escape becoming one of them.
* * * * *
He dozed, then woke a little later and listened. There was an air of
tension in the room, a whisper of something gone sharply wrong. Jeff
forced himself up on his elbow, tried to peer through the darkness.
Something had happened just before he awoke. He listened to the deathly
stillness in the room.
And then he knew what it was. The breathing in the next room had
stopped.
He lay back, his heart pounding, listening to the rasping of his
own breath, fear and despair rising up to new heights in his mind.
Death had come, then. One man who would never see the payoff he so
eagerly awaited. Jeff had felt death pass over the room, and he knew,
instinctively, that the entire unit would know it too without a single
word passing from a single mouth. For the sense of death was a tangible
thing here, moving with silent, imponderable footfalls from room to
room.
For the first time, Jeff felt a kinship, a depth of understanding to
share with the Mercy Men. And there was a depth of fear, deep down,
which he knew now that he must share with them too. Painfully, he
rolled over on his side and stared into the darkness for long minutes
before he fell into fitful sleep.