Something exploded in Jeff's brain then, something he could no more control than the creeping, vicious hatred of Paul Conroe that had driven him for so long. The jangling, tinny music of the tavern was screaming through his mind; the indelible picture of the swerving, gyrating figure: the long raven hair, the impassive face, the full lips. His knees buckled and his head was reeling, but he lurched across the room at the girl. Catching her by the collar, he drew her face up to his with a wrench that knocked the cigarette from her hand and brought her breath out in a gasp.
"All right," he grated. "Where is he? Come on, come on, talk! Where is he? And don't tell me he's not here, because I know he is, understand? I just saw him. I just chased him, down below. I know he's here! I want to know where."
Her foot came up sharply and caught him in the leg, sending an agony of pain into his thigh. Suddenly she began to fight like a cat, clawing, biting—blue fire in her eyes. Jeff brought his hand up and slapped her face twice, hard. With a snarl she caught him in the stomach with her foot and tore herself free, sending him reeling back against the wall.
He bounded off, then stopped dead in his tracks. A horrible realization exploded in his mind. She was standing poised, her face twisted, her eyes burning, a stream of poisonous language pouring at him. In her hand was a knife, blade up, balanced in her hand with deadly intent. But Jeff hardly noticed the knife; he didn't hear the words as he stared unbelievingly at her face, his heart sinking. Because the face was wrong, somehow.
The lips were not right, the nose was shaped differently, the glow in the eyes was not right. His panting turned into a bitter sob of disbelief, of incredible disappointment. There couldn't be any doubt—it simply was not the right girl.
"Where—where is he?" he asked weakly, his heart pounding helplessly in his throat.
"Not another step," the girl snarled. "Another inch and I'll slice you up like putty."
"No, no—" Jeff shook his head, trying desperately to clear his mind, to understand. This was the girl he had seen in the visiphone screen. Yes, the same clothes, the same face. But she wasn't the girl in the tavern. "Conroe," he blurted out, plaintively. "You—you must know Conroe—"
"I've never heard of Conroe."
"But you must have—last night, in that dive—dancing—"
Her jaw dropped as she stared at him in disgust. Then she gave the knife a flip into the desk top and sank down on her bed, her face relaxing. "Go away," she said tiredly. "That goddam Frenchman's sense of humor. Go on, beat it. I'm not rooming with any hoppy—at least until he's off the stuff."
"You don't know Conroe?"
The girl looked at him closely. "Look, Jack," she said with patient bitterness, "I don't know who you are and I don't know your pal Comstock or whatever it is. And I sure as hell wasn't dancing anywhere last night. I was working in the tank last night getting some looped-up hophead cooled off for the axe this morning. And it wasn't fun for either of us, and you'll be down there yourself if you don't cool off. And you won't like it, either. So go away, don't bother me."
Jeff sank down on the opposite bed, his head in his hands. "You—you looked so much like her—"
"So I looked so much like her!" She spat out a filthy word and drew her legs up, glaring at him.
Jeff reddened, his whole body aching. "All right, I'm sorry. I got excited. I couldn't help it. And I can't leave here—I tried it a little while ago and ran into a couple of fists."
Blackie's lip curled. "The guards don't like us down here. They don't like anything about us. They'll kill you if you give them half an excuse."
Jeff looked up at her. "But why? I didn't do anything."
The girl laughed harshly. "Do you think that makes any difference to them? Look, Jack, let's face it: you're in a prison, understand? They don't call it that, and there aren't any bars. But you're not going anywhere, and the boys in gray are here to see that you don't. And they hate us because we're not good enough for them, and we're in line for the kind of money they don't dare go after. You're here for one thing: to make money, big money, or to get your brains jolted loose, and nothing else—" She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. "Or are you?"
Jeff shook his head miserably. "No, nothing else. I'm waiting for testing. This other thing is an old fight, that's all. You wouldn't understand. You just looked so much like the girl—" He looked up at her, studying her face more closely. She wasn't as young as he had thought at first. There were little wrinkles around her eyes, a shade too much make-up showing where her mouth crinkled when she talked. Her lips were painted too full, and there was a tiredness in her eyes, a beaten, hunted look that she couldn't quite hide.
She leaned back on the bed, and even relaxation didn't erase the hardness. Only the jet black hair and the smooth black eyebrows looked young and fresh.
Jeff shook his head and kept staring at her. "I don't get it," he said helplessly. "I was assigned to this room—"
"So was I." The girl's eyes hardened.
"Are you one of the ... workers?"
She sneered bitterly. "You mean one of the experimental animals? That's right. The Mercy Men. Full of mercy, that's me." She spat on the floor.
"But the mixed company—"
There was no humor in her laugh. "What did you think, they'd have a separate boudoir for the ladies? How do they treat any kind of experimental animal? Get off it, Jack. They don't care what we do or how we live. All they want is good healthy human livestock when they're ready for it. Nothing more. That means they have to feed us and bunk us down. Period. And if you've got any wise ideas"—her eyes widened with a look of open viciousness, shocking in its intensity—"just try something. Just once. You'll find out a lot about Blackie in a hell of a rush." She rolled over contemptuously, turning her back to him. "You'll find out I don't like loonies for roommates, for instance."
Jeff lit a cigarette, his hands trembling. The room seemed to be spinning, and he felt his muscles sagging in pain and fatigue. He had counted so much on information from the girl. But incredible as the resemblance was, Blackie couldn't have been the girl he had seen in the tavern. If she had recognized him, he would have spotted it. She couldn't have hidden it completely.
Suddenly he felt terribly alone, almost beaten, helpless to go on. Where could he go? What could he do? How could he follow a trail that led straight into stone walls? He leaned back on the bed and yielded to the fatigue that plagued him. His mind sank into a confusion of hopelessness. Maybe, he thought wearily, maybe that plaguing doubt that lay in the fringes of his mind was right. Maybe he'd never find Conroe. He sighed as the darkness of utter exhaustion closed in on him, and his head sank back to the pillow—
He knew he was dreaming. Some tiny corner of his mind stood aside, prodding him, telling him he dare not sleep, that he must be up, moving, hunting, that the danger was too grave for sleep. But he slept, and the little corner of his mind prodded and cried out and watched....
He was walking along a brook, a walk he had taken once before, so very many years ago. A cool breeze struck down from the meadow, rumpling his hair. He heard the tinkle of the water as it sparkled across the rock. And he was afraid, so desperately afraid. The voice in his mind screamed out to him at every footstep, until he faltered and slowed and stopped.
Not here, Jeff, not here. Stop, stop now! If you go farther, you'll be dead—
Sweat broke out on his forehead. He tried to move forward, felt an iron grip on his legs.Stop, Jeff, stop, you'll die, Jeff—An overpowering wave of fear swept over him, and he turned. He ran like the wind, with the voice following him, crying out in his ear, following him on ghostly wings. In the dream he became a little boy again, running, screaming in fear. A man stood in his pathway, arms outstretched, and Jeff threw himself into his father's arms, sobbing as though his heart would break, clutching at him with incredible relief, burying his face in the strong, comforting chest.Oh, daddy, daddy, you're safe. You're here, daddy.
He looked up at his father's smiling face and he saw the strong, sensitive lines around the big man's mouth, the power and wisdom in the eyes. Nowhere else was there this sense of strength, of unlimited power, of complete comfort. He buried his face again in old Jacob Meyer's chest. A flood of deep peacefulness passed through his mind—
Jeff, Jeff, watch out!
He stiffened, his whole body going cold. The strong arms were no longer around him, and he was suddenly afraid again—afraid with a terror that bit deep into his mind. He looked up and screamed, a scream that echoed and re-echoed. It came again and again—a scream of pure terror. Because his father's face was no longer next to him. There was another face, hanging bodiless and luminous above him. It was chalk white—a face of pure ghoulish evil, staring at him.
It was Conroe's face. He screamed again, tried to cover his eyes, tried to shrink down into nothing. But the hideous, twisted face followed him. The horrible fear intensified, sweeping through him like a flame, twisting into fiery hate in his heart, as he watched the evil, glowing face.
He killed your father, Jeff. He butchered your father, shot him down like an animal, in cold blood—
Jeff screamed and the evil face grinned and moved closer, until the rank breath was hot on Jeff's neck.
You must kill him, Jeff. He killed your father—
But why? Why did he do it, why ... why ...why? There was no answer. The voice trailed off into horrible laughter. Quite suddenly the face was gone. In its place was a tiny, distant figure—running, running like the wind, down the narrow, darkened hospital corridor. And Jeff was running too, burning with hatred, fighting desperately to catch up with the fleeing figure, to close the gap between them.
The walls were of gray stone. Conroe was running swiftly, unhindered. But horrid objects swept out of the walls at Jeff. He tripped on a wet, slimy thing on the floor and fell on his face. He scrambled up again as the figure disappeared around a far corner. The walls were gray and wet around him. He reached the Y, waiting, panting, screaming out his hatred down the empty, re-echoing hallways.
Then suddenly he glimpsed the figure and started running again, but they were no longer in the Hoffman Center. They were running down a hillside, a horrible, barren hillside, studded with long knives and spears and swords—shiny blades standing straight up from the ground, gleaming in the bluish light.
Conroe was far ahead, moving nimbly through the gauntlet of swords. But Jeff couldn't follow his path, for new knives sprang up before him, cutting his ankles, ripping his clothes. He panted, near exhaustion, as the figure vanished in the distance. Sinking down to the ground, Jeff sobbed, his whole body shaking. And the voice screamed mockingly in his ear:You'll never get him, Jeff. No matter how hard you try, you'll never get him ... never ... never ... never....
But I've got to, I've got to. I've got to find him and kill him. Daddy told me to—
He woke with a jolt, his screams still echoing in the still room, sweat pouring from his forehead and body, soaking his clothes. He sat bolt upright. He searched for his watch, but couldn't find it.How long had he slept?
His eyes shot to the opposite bed, standing empty, and he rolled out onto his feet. He had the horrible feeling that the world had passed him by, that he had missed something critical while he slept.
He stared at his wrist. The watch was definitely gone. Then, with a curse, he crossed the room and ripped open Blackie's foot locker. Sure enough, the watch lay with the heap of gold jewelry on the dirty clothes pile. He stared at it as he re-strapped it on his wrist. Then he walked into the lavatory, splashed cold water into his face and tried to quell the fierce painful throbbing in his head. The watch said eight-thirty. He had slept for five hours—five precious hours for Conroe to hide, cover his tracks, disappear deeper into this mire of human trash.
Jeff stumbled to the door, glanced out to see two gray-clothed guards passing in the corridor. Quietly he pulled the door shut. His stomach was screaming from hunger and he searched the room restlessly. Finally, he unearthed a box of crackers and a quarter pound of cheese in the bottom of Blackie's locker. He ate ravenously and drank some water from the lavatory tap. Then he sank down on the edge of the bed.
The dream again, the same horrible, frightening, desperate dream—the dream that recurred and recurred; always different, yet always the same. The same face that had haunted him all his life, the face that had almost driven him insane that day, five years before, when he met it face to face for the first time; the face of the man he had hunted to the ends of the earth. But never had he caught the man, never had he seen him but for brief glimpses. Conroe had slipped from every trap before it was sprung. Yet finally he had become so desperate that he was forced to retreat down a one-way road that led to hellish death.
Jeff shook his head hopelessly as he tried to piece together the situation. He was in a half-world of avaricious men and women out to sell themselves for incredible fees. It was a half-world that seemed to Jeff only slightly more insane than the warped, intense world of pressure and fear and insecurity that lay outside the Hoffman Center. And in this half-world were a doctor who knew Jeff was a fraud, a kleptomaniac girl who thought he was an addict, and somewhere—the slender figure of the man he hunted.
Again he walked to the door. After peering out cautiously, he started down the corridor. From the far end he heard a burst of laughter, the sound of many voices. The smell of coffee floated down the corridor to tantalize him. He followed the sounds and reached the large, long room that served as a lounge and library for the Mercy Men in his unit.
The room was crowded. A dozen groups were huddled on the floor in a buzz of frantic excitement. The room was blue with cigarette smoke, and the lights glowed harshly from the walls. He saw the dice rolling in the centers of the groups and he also saw half a dozen tables, crowded with bright-eyed people. He heard the riffle of playing cards and the harsh, tense laugh of a winner drawing in a pot. And then he spied the Nasty Frenchman, his eyes bright with excitement, a cup of exceedingly black coffee in one hand and a pile of white paper tags in the other.
He grinned at Jeff with undisguised malice and said, "Come on in, wise guy. Things are just beginning to get hot."
Blinking, Jeff walked into the room.
His first impulse was to turn and run. There was no explaining it, no rationalizing the feeling of dread and danger that struck him as he walked into the room. The feeling swept over him with almost overpowering intensity; something was unbearably wrong here.
Jeff walked in slowly, closing the door behind him. The door seemed to be pulled tight shut, sucked out of his hand. That was when the tension in the air struck Jeff like an almost physical force, and his mind filled with dread.
No one noticed him. He stared around himself curiously. He watched the Nasty Frenchman shoulder his way through the crowd. One of Silly Giggin's particularly maddening nervous-jazz arrangements was squawking from a player somewhere in the room, and the air itself was filled with a jagged rattle of conversation that rose above the music.
Most of the faces were new to Jeff. There were tired, old ones, marked indelibly with lines of fear, lines of hunted hopelessness. There were faces with tight, compressed, bloodless lips; faces with eyes full of coldness and cynicism, and faces radiating sharp, perverted intelligence.
Crowds leaned tensely around the tables and watched the cards with eager, calculating eyes. Side bets were made as the hands were opened. Other groups huddled on the floor and watched the dice with beady, avaricious eyes.
The music jangled and scraped, and little bursts of harsh laughter broke out to compete with it. And through it all ran the chilling inescapable feeling of error, of something missed, something gone horribly wrong.
He moved slowly through the room and searched the faces milling around him. His eyes caught Blackie's, far across the room, for the barest instant, and the chill of something gone wrong intensified and sent a quiver up his spine. He stopped a passerby and motioned at the nearest dice huddle. "How do you get in?" he asked.
The man shrugged, looking at him strangely. "You lay down your money and you play," he snapped. "If you got no money, then you've got the next job's payoff to bet with. 'Smatter, Jack, you new around here?" And the man moved on, shaking his head.
Jeff nodded, realization striking. What would be more natural to a group of people teetering from day to day on the brink of death? The need for excitement, for activity, would be overpowering in a dismal prison-place like this. And with the huge sums of money yet unearned to bet with—Jeff shuddered. Cut-throat games, yes, but could they really explain this strange tension he sensed? Or had something happened, something to change the atmosphere, to pervade every nook and cranny of the room with an air of explosive tension?
Jeff started moving toward the Nasty Frenchman. The little man was gulping coffee in the corner. He sucked on a long, black cigar and appeared to be in deep conversation with a bald-headed giant who leaned against the wall. Jeff spotted Blackie again. She was across the room on her knees. She faced a little buck-toothed man, as she swiftly rolled the three colored dice. Her eyes followed them, quick and unnaturally bright.
Jeff shook his head. Panmumjon was a high-speed, high-tension game—a game for the steel-nerved. Its famous dead-locks had often led to murder, as the pots rose higher and higher. The girl seemed to be winning. She rolled the dice with trance-like regularity, and the little buck-toothed man's face darkened as his money pile dwindled.
Across the room a corner crap game was moving swiftly, with staggering sums of money passing from hand to hand; the card games, though slower, left the mark of their tension on the players' faces. Jeff still stared, until he had seen every face in the room. Paul Conroe's face was not one of them.
No, he had not expected that. But what had happened? It was maddening to stand there, to feel the tension in the room, sense that it was growing until it seemed to pound at his temples. No one else seemed to notice it. Was he the only one aware of the change in the air, in the sounds, even in the color of the light against the walls? Something was impelling him, urging him to run, to get away, to leave the room now while he could. Yet when he tried to analyze the creeping, poisonous fear, tried to pin it down, it wriggled away into the fringes of his mind, and mocked him.
Finally, he reached the corner of the room. His ear caught the Nasty Frenchman's nasal voice, and he froze as he stared at the little man.
"I tell you, Harpo, I heard it with my own ears. You never saw Schiml so excited. And then Shaggy Parsons was saying that the whole unit was being split up—that's the A unit. I saw him when I was going through this afternoon. He was all excited, too."
"But why split it up?" The huge bald-headed man called Harpo growled, his heavy lips twisting in disgust. "I don't trust Shaggy Parsons for nothin', and I think you hear what you want to hear. What's the point to it? Schiml's coming along fine in the work he's using us in—"
The Nasty Frenchman turned red. "That's just it: we've been in and we're going to be out, right out in the cold. Can't you get that straight? Something's going to break. They're onto something—Schiml and his boys—something big. And they've got a new man, somebody they're excited about, somebody that's been knocking walls down just by looking at them, or something—"
Harpo made a disgusted noise. "You mean, the old ESP story again. So maybe they go off on another spook hunt. They'll get over it, same as they did the last time or the time before."
The Nasty Frenchman's voice was tense. "But they'rechanging things. And changes mean trouble." He glanced at Jeff and his eyebrows went up. "Look, they get on a line of work, they assign men to different parts of a job, they get work lined up months in advance. Then all of a sudden something new comes along. They get excited about something and they toss out a couple dozen workers, add on a couple dozen new ones, change the fees, change the work. And they end up handing the best pay to somebody who's just come in. I don't like it. I've been in this place too long. I've had too many tough, lousy jobs here to just get pushed aside because they don't happen to be interested any more in what they were doing to me before. And they never tell us! We never know for sure. We just have to wait and guess and hope."
The little man's eyes blazed. "But we can pick up some things, a little here, a little there—you learn how, after a while. And I can tell you, something's wrong, something's going to happen. You can even feel it in here."
Jeff's skin crawled. That was it, of course. There was something wrong. But it hadn't happened yet. It was going to happen. He stared at a huddled group around a panmumjon game, watched the bright-colored dice cubes roll across and back, across and back. A newcomer, the Nasty Frenchman had said, someone who had come in and disrupted the smooth work schedule of the Center, someone who had the doctors suddenly excited. Someone whom they were planning to use—on a spook hunt.
What kind of a spook hunt? Why that choice of words? Could Conroe conceivably be the newcomer they had been talking about? It didn't seem possible that it could have happened so suddenly if Conroe were the one—but who? And what did this have to do with the ever-growing sense of impending danger that pervaded the room, right now?
Jeff's eyes wandered to the dice game, and the fear in his mind suddenly grew to a screaming torrent.Go away, Jeff. Don't watch, don't look—He scowled, suddenly angry. Why not look? What was there so dangerous in a dice game? He moved over to the nearby huddle and watched the moving cubes in fascination.No, Jeff, no, don't do it, Jeff—With a curse, he dropped to his knees and reached out for the dice.
"You in?" somebody asked. Jeff nodded, his face like a rock. The voice had stopped screaming in his ear, and now something else grew in his mind: a wild exhilaration that caught his breath and swept through his brain like a whirl-wind. His eyes sparkled and he pulled money from his pocket. He laid the bills on the floor and his hands closed on the dice.
He faced a little, pimple-faced man with beady black eyes and he raised the three brightly colored dice, rolling into the familiar pattern. The dice deadlocked in four throws. He sweated out seven more with new dice. Then Jeff saw a break in the odds, boosted the ante on his next throw and caught his breath as the man facing him matched it.
The dice rolled, fell into deadlock again, and the crowd around them gasped, moved in closer around them. The third set of dice was brought out, for the attempts at dead-lock-breaking. Then a fourth set followed, as the complex structure of the game built up like a house of cards. Then Jeff's dice at last rolled the critical number, and the structure began to break apart—throw after throw falling faster and faster into his hands.
Four or five people moved in at his side with side bets and began to collect along with him, as he moved into another game, built it up. This one he lost cold, but still he played on, his excitement growing.
And then, suddenly, pandemonium broke loose in the room. Eyes glanced up, startled, at the two men, far across the room, who stood facing each other, eyes blazing.
"Throw them down! Go on! Throw them, see how they land!"
Somebody shouted, "What happened, Archie?"
"He's got loaded dice in here, somehow." Archie pointed an accusing finger at the other man. "They don't fall right. There's something wrong with them—"
The other man snarled. "So you aren't winning any more—so what? You brought the dice in yourself."
"But the odds aren't right. There's something funny going on."
Jeff turned back to the dice, his mind still screaming, sensing that disaster hung in the air like a heavy sword. His own game moved on, faster and faster. Somewhere across the room another fight broke out, and another. Several men dropped out of games and stood up against the walls. Their eyes were wide with anger as they watched the other players. And then Jeff rolled three sixes, fourteen times in a row. He tossed the dice down in front of his gaping opponents with a curse and walked shakily back to the corner. The whole room spun around his head.
Suddenly, in this room, probabilities had gone mad.He could feel the shifting instability of the atmosphere, as real and oppressive to him as if it were solid and he were attempting to wade through it. This was what had been bothering him, plaguing him. Quite suddenly and without explanation, something impossible had begun to happen. Cards had begun to fall in unbelievable sequences, repeating themselves with idiotic regularity; dice had defied the laws of gravity as they spun on the tables and floor.
A hubbub filled the room as the players stopped and stared at each other, unable to comprehend the impossible that was happening before their eyes. And then Blackie was passing Jeff, her face flushed, a curious light of desperation in her eyes.
An impulse passed through Jeff's mind. He reached out an arm, stopped the girl. "Game," he said sharply.
Her eyes flashed at him. "What game?"
"Anything." He held up his wrist before her eyes and showed her the gold watch. "We can play for this."
Something flared in her eyes for a moment before she gained control. Then she was down on her knees, pushing her sleeves up, a tight look of fear and dread haunting her eyes as she looked up at Jeff. "Something's happening," she said softly. "The dice—they're not right."
"I know it. Why not?" His voice was hoarse, his eyes hard on her face.
She threw him a baffled look. "There isn't any reason. Nothing is different, but the dice don't fall right. That's all, they just don't."
Jeff grinned tightly. "Go on, throw them."
She threw the dice, saw them dance on the floor, caught her number. Jeff rolled them, beat her on it, picked up the money. He rolled again, then again. The tightness grew around the girl's eyes; little tense lines hardened near her mouth. Nervously, she fumbled a cigarette into her mouth, lit it, puffed as the dice rolled.
She lost. She lost again. Side bets picked up around them, the people as they watched catching the tension that was building up.
"What's happening?"
"The dice—my God! They've gone crazy!"
"Blackie's losing. What do you think—"
"—losing? She never loses on dice. Who's the guy?"
"Never saw him before. Look, he took another one! Those dice are hexed."
"My cards were crazy too: king high full every time, a dozen hands in a row. How can you bet on something like that, I ask you."
The Silly Giggins record screeched louder, then gave a squawk as the record suddenly shattered in a thousand pieces. Somebody cursed and threw a pack of cards on the floor, and a scream broke out across the room. One group came suddenly to blows; several dice games tightened down to bloody conflict between individuals. A man burst into tears, suddenly, and sat back on his haunches, his face stricken. "They can't act this way," he wailed. "They justcan't—"
Jeff's eyes watched the spinning dice, and again something was screaming in his ear. He felt as though his head were going to burst, but he continued to roll and he saw the girl's face darken with each throw. He saw the fear shine out from her blue eyes. Suddenly she let out a curse, snatched the dice from Jeff's hand and threw them sharply across the room. She stared at Jeff venomously, then glared at the people around her as if she were a cornered animal.
"It's all of you," she snarled. "You're turning them against me. You're making them fall wrong." She spat on the floor and started for the door. Jeff moved after her but felt a restraining hand on his arm.
"Leave her alone," said the Nasty Frenchman. "You'll have trouble on your hands if you don't. You see what I meant about something being wrong? The whole crowd here is on edge, as if somebody were picking them up and throwing them down. Who ever saw dice fall that way, or cards fall that way"—the little man's eyes flashed slyly—"unless somebody was controlling them."
Jeff's breath was faster as he stared at the Nasty Frenchman, and his voice was hoarse. "What are you talking about?"
The little man's lips twisted angrily. "You saw what happened in here, didn't you?"
Jeff turned away in anger. He wove through the crowd, his jaw tight as he moved toward the door. The Nasty Frenchman could only glimpse the truth, but someone else saw more, much more. Somehow, Jeff knew that this past hour held the key to the whole problem, if he could only see it. Here was the answer to the whole tangled puzzle of the girl and Paul Conroe, of Dr. Schiml and the Mercy Men.
And he knew that when he reached the room, the girl would be waiting. She would be waiting with cold fire in her eyes, as she sat at the table, a small pair of colored dice lying before her in the dim light.
Jeff hurried down the darkened corridor, fear exploding in his brain. She would be there and he knew why she would be smoldering when he walked into the room. He had seen her eyes, seen her face as they had thrown the dice. He knew beyond any shadow of doubt who had been controlling the dice.
The girl was waiting, just as he had known she would. He stepped into the room and closed the door gently behind him, facing her desperate eyes as she rolled the colored dice back and forth in front of her. "Game," she challenged, her voice harsh and metallic.
The room was tense with silent fear as he sank down opposite her at the table.
Jeff reached out and took the dice from the girl's hand. "Put them away, Blackie," he said softly, "You don't have to prove anything. I know—"
"Game," she repeated harshly, shaking her head.
"Look. Think a minute. Back there, do you know what happened in that room?"
Her eyes caught his and were wide with fear. "Game," she whispered, her hands trembling. "You've got to play me!"
He shrugged, his eyes tired as he watched her face. He took the dice and rolled them out on the table. A three, a four and a five fell; he saw her eyes flash across the table, taking in the sequence. Then her hand reached out, grasped the dice, gave them a throw. The hostility in her mind struck out at him, reinforcing the terrible dread that he already felt. He fought the hostility, staring at the dice, his hands gripping the edge of the table. And the dice danced and settled down: a three, a four and a five....
The girl's eyes widened, staring first at him, then back at the dice. Slowly she reached out, took the cube with the five showing, sent it bouncing across the table. It spun and bounced—and settled down once again with the five exposed.
Jeff felt the blast of bitter fear strike out from the girl's eyes. The room seemed to scream with the tension he felt. She took the dice with trembling hands, threw them out hard and clenched her fists as they fell. The three and four settled out immediately. Jeff watched the third cube, spinning on one corner, spinning ... spinning.... He felt his muscles grow tense, his mind screaming, tightening down as he stared at the little cube. It was as though an iron fist held his brain in its palm and was slowly, slowly squeezing. And the little cube continued, ridiculously, to spin and spin, until it quite suddenly flipped over onto its side and lay still with the five exposed.
Blackie gave a choked scream, her face pasty white. "Then it was you." She choked, staring at him as if he were a ghost. "You were doing it deliberately in there, throwing off the odds, twisting things around, turning the dice against me."
Jeff shook his head violently. "No, no, not me—us—both of us. We were fighting each other, without knowing it—"
Her hand went up to her mouth, choking off the words as she stared at him. Jeff stared at the dice, his whole body trembling, huge drops of sweat running down his forehead. And as he watched, the dice hopped about on the table, like jumping beans, turning over and over, jerkily, spinning on their edges in a horrible, incredible little dance. Jeff shook his head, his eyes wide with horror as he watched the dice.
"You knew it all along," the girl choked. "You came in there just to torment me, to show me up—"
"No, no." Jeff turned wide eyes on her. "I didn't know it, until I picked up the dice in that room. Something drove me to do it. I didn't know what I was doing until all of a sudden the dice were doing what I wanted them to do—" He broke off, panting. "I never knew it, I never dreamed it." His eyes sought the girl's, pleading. "I didn't understand it; I couldn't help it. I just knew that something wrong was going on. And then I knew that somebody was fighting me. There was a tension in it. I felt it. I knew somebody was tampering with the dice. Then when I got near you, I knew it was you."
The girl's face was working, tears welling up in her eyes. "I had to—I had to win with them."
"Then you knew you were doing it!" Jeff stared at her. "And when both of us started tampering, opposing each other, the probabilities governing the games went wild, completely wild."
The girl was sobbing, her face in her hands. "I could always control it. It always worked. It was the only thing I could do that came out right. Everything else has always gone wrong." She sobbed like a baby, her shoulders shaking as she choked out great, racking sobs.
Jeff leaned forward, almost cruelly, his eyes burning at her. "When did you find out you could ... make dice fall the way you wanted them to?"
The girl shook her head helplessly. "I didn't know it. I didn't have any idea, until I came here. It was the only thing I could win at. Everything else I lost at. All my life I've been losing."
"What have you been losing?"
"Everything, everything—everything I touch turns black, goes sour, somehow."
"But what,what?" Jeff leaned toward the girl, his voice hoarse. "Why did you come here? How did you get here?"
The girl's sobs broke out again, her shoulders shaking in anguish. "I don't know, I don't know. Oh, I could take it, up to a limit, but then I couldn't stand it any more. Everything I tried went wrong; everyone that was near me went wrong too. Even the rackets wouldn't work with me around."
"What rackets?"
Her voice was weak and cracking. "Any of the rackets. I've been in a dozen, two dozen, ever since the war. Dad was killed in the first bombing of the Fourth War, when I was just a kid—twelve, thirteen, I can't remember now. He died trying to get us out of the city and through to the Defense area north of the Trenton section. Radiation burns got him, maybe pneumonia, I don't know. But it got Dad first and Mom later."
She straightened up and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "We never did get out of the devastated area. We were killing dogs and cats for food for a while. Then when things did get straightened out, we ran into the inflation, the burned-out crops, the whole rat-race. The dirty breaks were coming in hard then. First we were guerrillas, then we were bushwhackers. Then we came into the city again and started shaking down the rich ones that came back from the mountains where they hid."
"But you came in here," Jeff grated. "Why here, if you were doing so well in rackets?"
"I wasn't. Can't you understand? The luck—it was running wrong, worse and worse all the time. And then I got hooked on dope. Narcotics control was all shot to pieces during the war; heroin was all over the place. But they knew I had this hard-luck jinx. They caught me on it, until I was hooked bad."
She shrugged, her face a study in pathetic hopelessness. "They hauled me in here. Schiml sold me his bill of goods. What could I lose? I was so tired, I didn't care. I didn't care if they jolted my brains loose, or what they did to me. All I wanted was to eat and get off the dope and get enough cash so I could try for something decent, where hard luck couldn't touch me. And I didn't really care if I never got out."
"But with the dice you made out."
"Oh, yes, with the dice—" The girl's eyes flickered for a moment. "I found out I could make them sit up and talk for me. I played it cozy, didn't let anybody catch on. But they always worked for me, until tonight—"
Jeff nodded, his face white. "Until tonight, when you found out you were fighting for control. Because tonight I found out they'd talk for me too. And you couldn't beat me with them."
Her voice was weak. "I—I couldn't budge them. They fell the way you called them."
"It isn't possible, you know," Jeff said softly. "Every time they've tried to prove it was, they've found some loophole in the study of it, something wrong somewhere. Nobody's ever proved a thing about psychokinesis."
The girl grinned mirthlessly. "They've been trying to prove it here since the year one. Every now and again they get hot on it. They've just tested somebody that's got them excited and they'll be starting the whole works over again."
Jeff leaned over, his eyes blazing. "Yes, yes, who's that person?"
"I don't know. I just heard it. A new recruit, I guess."
"A recruit named Conroe?"
Her eyes widened at the virulence in his voice. "I—I don't know, I don't know. I've only heard. I don't even know if thereissuch a person."
"Where can I find out?"
Again the fear was in her eyes. "I—I don't know."
Jeff's voice was tense, his eyes fixed on the girl's face in desperate eagerness. "Look, you've got to help me. I know he's here. I must find him. I saw him this afternoon. Remember when the guards brought me in here? I saw him on the stairs. I chased him and lost him, but he's here. He's hiding, running away from me. I've got to find him, somehow. Please, Blackie, you can help me."
Her eyes were wide on his face. "What do you want with him? Why are you after him? I don't want to get mixed up in anything—"
"No, no, it won't mix you up. Look, I want to kill him. Short and sweet, nothing more—just kill him. I want to send one bullet into his brain, watch his face splatter out, watch his skull break open. That's all I want, just one bullet—"
Jeff's voice was low, the words wrenched from his throat, and the hatred in his eyes was poisonous as it washed over the girl's face. "He haunts me, for years he's haunted me." Jeff's voice dropped, the words breaking the stillness of the room in a hoarse, terrible cadence. "He killed my father. This Conroe—he butchered my father like an animal, shot him down in cold blood. It was horrible, ruthless. Conroe was the assassin. He killed my father without a thought of mercy in his mind. And I loved my father, I loved him with all the love I had." He stared at the girl. "I'll kill the man that killed my father if I have to die myself in the killing."
"And that man is here?"
"That man is here. I've hunted him for years. This was his last resort, his final desperate gamble for escape. He had nowhere else to turn. I've got the outside tied up so that he doesn't dare to leave. Now I've got to track him down in here. I've got to find him and kill him, before I'm caught, before I'm tested and classified. I've got to move fast and I need help. I need help so much."
The girl leaned toward him, her eyes dark as she stared at him. "The dice," she said softly. "I've been playing it cozy. I still could—if you'll let me."
His eyes widened. "Anything you say," he said. "We'll play it cozy together. But I've got to have floor plans of the place, information on how to avoid the guards. I've got to know where their records are kept, their lists and rosters and working plans."
"Then it's a deal?"
His eyes caught hers, and for an instant he saw something behind the mask she wore, something of the fear that lay back there, something of a little child who fought against impossible odds to find a toehold in the world. Then the barrier was back up, and her eyes were blank and revealed nothing.
Jeff held out his hand, touched her palm lightly and clenched her fingers. "It's a deal," he said.
The trip down the corridor was a nightmare. Jeff's mind was still reeling from the incredible discovery of the dice, the sudden, unbelievable awareness that he and Blackie had been silently and fiercely battling each other for control, fighting with a fury that had somehow shattered the very warp of probability in the room where they had been. How could he have had a part in something like this? He had never had reason to suspect he might carry such a power, yet here was evidence he could not disregard. And how could it fit into the question of Paul Conroe, and the mysterious recruit to the Mercy Men who had just been tested?
A thought struck Jeff, quite suddenly. It came with such impact that he stopped cold in his tracks. It was so simple, so impossible, yet no more impossible than the things he had already seen with his own eyes. Because the incredible record of escapes that Conroe carried, the impossible regularity with which Conroe had managed to avoid capture, time after time, seemed too much to accept as coincidence. And if Conroe were indeed carrying latent extra-sensory powers, he could continue to slip from trap after trap—unless Jeff could oppose those powers with powers of his own.
Jeff cursed in his teeth. How could he tell? He had no evidence that Conroe carried any extra-sensory power whatsoever, and surely there was little enough to indicate that he had any more than most latent powers. There were so many, many possibilities, and so little concrete evidence to go on.
And if Conroe had such powers, why had he been so startled to meet Jeff on the stairs? Why the look of fear and disbelief that had streaked across his face? Jeff glanced at his watch, saw the minute hand move to eleven-thirty. He would have to hurry, for the guards would be down the escalator in a few moments. And these thoughts of his could lead to nowhere. Conroe had been jolted to see Jeff. It must have been a horrible shock for him to realize that the Hunter had followed him, even into this death trap, to know that the Hunter would have the outside so well guarded that he, the Hunted, could never get out. Now Conroe would be forced to gamble against being caught and assigned to work as a Mercy Man. Yes, it must have been a horrible jolt for Conroe, driving one last, searing bolt of fear into his already desperate mind. And what would he have tried to do?
A thousand ideas flooded Jeff's mind. He was waiting for testing. Perhaps Conroe, somehow, had been tested already? Could Jeff succeed in stalling Schiml, especially if the rumors spinning down the dark corridors were true? There was no sure way of telling. All Jeff could do was to search the file rooms Blackie had directed him to.
He stopped at the entrance to the escalator, pored over the floor plan Blackie had sketched for him. He spotted the escalator, oriented himself on the plan. The filing rooms were two flights below. If he could reach them without being stopped.... He moved silently onto the down shaft, his eyes moving constantly for a sight of a gray-garbed prowler.
At the foot of the escalator he stopped short. Three men in white were pushing a gurney along the corridor. Jeff glanced quickly at the twitching form under the blankets. Then he looked away hurriedly. One of the men dropped behind and waved at him sharply as he stepped off the stairs. The man still wore the operating mask hanging from his neck, and his hair was tightly enclosed in the green-knit operating cap.
The doctor tipped a thumb over his shoulder and pointed down the corridor. "You coming to fix the pump?"
Jeff blinked rapidly. "That's right," he croaked. "Did—did Jerry come with the tools yet?"
"Nobody came in yet. We just finished. Been in there since three this afternoon, and the damned pump went kerflooey right in the middle. Had to aspirate the poor joe by hand, and if you thinkthat'snot a job—" The doctor wiped sweat from his forehead. "Better get it fixed tonight. We've got another one going in at eight in the morning and we've got to have the pump."
Jeff nodded, and started down the hall, his heart thudding madly against his ribs. He reached the open door to one of the operating rooms. Slipping quickly into the small dressing-room annex, he snatched one of the gowns and caps from the wall.
If they were still operating this late, it was a heaven-sent chance. No guard would bother him if he were wearing the white of a doctor or the green of a surgeon. He struggled into the clumsy gowning, tying it quickly behind his back, and slipped the cap over his head. Finally he found a mask, snapped it up under his ears as he had seen it worn by the doctors in the corridors.
In a moment he was back on the escalator, descending to the next floor. At the foot of the stairs, he started quickly down the corridor Blackie had indicated, glancing at each door as he passed. The first two had lights under them, indicating that these apparently were operating rooms still in use. Finally he stopped before a large, heavy door, with a simple sign painted on the wooden panel:Computor Technicians Only. He tried the door, found it locked. Quickly he glanced up and down the corridor, doubled a hard fist and drove it through the panel with a crunch. Then he fumbled inside for the lock.
In an instant he was inside. The torn hole in the panel glared at him. He threw the door wide open and snapped on the overhead lights, throwing the room into bright fluorescent light. Then he drew the pale-green gown closer about him and moved across the room to the huge file panel that faced him.
It was not his first experience with the huge punched-card files which had become so necessary in organizations where the numbers and volumes of records made human operatives too slow or clumsy. Quickly Jeff moved to the master-control panel, searched for the section and coding system for Research: Subject Personnel.
First he would try the simple coding for Conroe's name, on the chance that Conroe had come in using his own name. Jeff rechecked the coding, punched the buttons which would relay through the cards alphabetically; then he waited as the machinery whirred briefly. A panel lighted near the bottom of the control board, spelling the two words:No Information.
Jeff's fingers sped over the coding board again, as he started coding in a description. He coded in height, weight, eye color, hair color, bone contour, lip formation—every other descriptive category he could think of. Then again he punched the "Search" button.
This time several dozen cards fell down. He picked them up from the yield-slot and slowly leafed through them, glancing both at the small photograph attached to each card and at the small "date of admission" code symbol at the top of each card. Again he found nothing. Disgusted, he tried the same system again, this time adding two limiting coding symbols: Subject Personnel and Recent Admission. And again the cards were negative. Not a single one could possibly have been connected with Paul Conroe.
Jeff sat down at the desk facing the panel and he searched his mind for another pathway of identification. Suddenly a thought occurred to him. He searched through his pocket for a picture wallet, drew out the small, ID-size photo of Conroe that he carried for identification purposes.
Searching the panel, he finally found the slot he was looking for: the small, photoelectronic chamber for recording picture identification. He slipped the photo into the slot, punched the "Search" button, and waited again, his whole body tense.
The machine buzzed for a long moment. Then a single card dropped into the slot. Eagerly Jeff snatched it up, stared down at the attached photograph which almost perfectly matched the photo from his pocket. Near the top of the card was a small typewritten notation:Conroe, Paul A.,Information Restricted. All File Notations Recorded in Hoffman Center Central Archives.
Below this notation was a list of dates. Jeff read them, staring in disbelief, then read them again. Incredible, those dates—dates of admission to the Hoffman Center and dates of release. It was impossible that Conroe could have been here at the times the dates indicated: ten years ago, when the Hoffman Center was hardly opened; five years ago, during the very time when Jeff had been tracking him down. Yet the dates were there, in black and white, cold, impersonal, indisputable. And below the dates was a final notation, inked in by hand:Central Archives Classification: ESP Research.
Swiftly Jeff stuffed the card into his shirt. He refiled the other cards with trembling fingers, his heart pounding a frightful tattoo in his forehead. Incredible, yet he knew, somehow, that it fit into the picture, that it was a key to the picture. He turned, started for the door, and stopped dead.
"Schiml!" he breathed.
The figure lounged against the door, green cap askew on his head, mask still dangling about his neck. There was a smile on his face as he leaned back, regarding Jeff in amusement. Nonchalantly, he tossed a pair of dice into the air, and caught them, still smiling. "Let's go, Jeff," said Dr. Schiml. "We've got some tests to run."
"You—you mean, in the morning," Jeff stammered, hardly believing his ears.
The smile broadened on the doctor's lips, and he gave the dice another toss and dropped them in his pocket. "Not in the morning, Jeff," he said softly. "Now."
Jeff sank down in the chair, his forehead streaming sweat. He clenched his fists as he tried to regain control of his trembling muscles.How long had Schiml been standing there?Just a second or two? Or had he been watching Jeff for ten minutes, watching him punch down the filing codes, watching him stuff the filing card into his shirt? There was nothing to be told from the doctor's face, as the man smiled down at his trembling quarry. There was nothing in the eyes of the guards who stood behind him in the hallway, their hands poised on their heavy sidearms.
Schiml turned to one of them, nodded slightly, and they disappeared, their boots clanging in the still corridor behind them. Then he turned his eyes back to Jeff, the ghost of a knowing smile still flickering about his eyes. "Find anything interesting?" he asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Jeff fumbled a cigarette to his lips, gripped the lighter to steady it. "Nothing to speak of," he said hoarsely. "Been a long time since I worked one of these files." His eyes caught Schiml's defiantly, held them in desperation. Finally Schiml blinked and looked away.
"Looking for anything special?" he asked smoothly.
"Nothing special." Jeff blew smoke out into the room, his trembling nerves quieting slightly.
"I see. Just sight-seeing, I suppose."
Jeff shrugged. "More or less. I wanted to see the setup."
A dry smile crossed Schiml's face. "Particularly the setup in the filing room," he said softly. "I thought I'd find you here. Blackie said you'd just stepped out for a short walk, so we just took a guess." The doctor's eyes hardened sharply on Jeff's face. "And all dressed up like a doctor, too."
He stepped across the room, jerked the cap from Jeff's head, snapped the string to the gown with a sharp swipe of his hand. "We don't do this around here," he said, his voice cutting like a razor. "Doctors wear these, nobody else. Got that straight? We also do not wander around breaking into filing rooms, just looking at the setup. If the guards had caught you at it, you wouldn't be alive right now—which would have been a dirty shame, since we have plans for you." He jerked his thumb toward the door. "After you, Jeff. We've got some work to do tonight."
Jeff moved out into the hall, took up beside the tall doctor as he started back for the escalator. "You weren't serious about testing me tonight, surely."
Dr. Schiml stared at him. "And why not?"
"Look, it's late. I'll be here in the morning."
The doctor walked on in silence for a long moment. Jeff followed, his mind racing, a thousand questions tumbling through in rapid succession: questions he dared not ask, questions he couldn't answer. How much did Schiml know? And how much did he suspect? A chill ran down Jeff's back. What had he been doing with the dice? Could Blackie possibly have told him? Or could he have heard about the freakish occurrence in the game room through other channels? And what could he learn in the course of the testing that he didn't know already?
Jeff puzzled as he matched the doctor's rapid pace. They went up the escalator, down the twisting corridor toward an area beyond the living quarters that Jeff hadn't seen before. Above all, he must keep his nerve, keep a tight control on his tongue, on his reactions, make sure that there were no tricks to tear information from him that he didn't dare divulge.
He looked at Schiml, sharply, a frown on his face. "I still don't see why this can't wait till morning. Why the big hurry?"
Schiml stopped, turned to Jeff in exasperation. "You still think we're running a picnic grounds here, don't you?" he snapped. "Well, we're not. We're doing a job, a job that can't wait for morning or anything else. We work a twenty-four-hour schedule here. All you do is provide the where-withal to work with—nothing more."
"But I'll be tired, nervous. I don't see how I could pass any kind of test."
Schiml laughed shortly. "These aren't the kind of tests you pass or fail. Actually, the more tired and nervous you are, the better the results will be for you. They'll give you an extra edge of safety when you're assigned to a job. What the tests tell us is what we can expect from you, the very minimum. Basically, we're working to save your life for you."
Jeff blinked at him, followed him through swinging doors into a long, brightly lighted corridor, with green walls and a gleaming tile floor. "What do you mean, save my life? You seem to delight in just the opposite here, from what I've heard."
The doctor made an impatient noise. "You got the wrong information," he said angrily. "That's the trouble. You people insist upon listening to and believing the morbid stories, all the unpleasantness you hear about the work here. And it's all either completely false or only half-truth. This business of bloodthirstiness, for instance. It's just plain not true.
"One of the biggest factors in our work here is making arrangements for optimum conditions for the success of our experiments. By 'optimum' we mean the best conditions from several standpoints: from the standpoint of what we're trying to learn—the experiment itself, that is—and from the standpoint of the researcher, too. But most particularly, we're working for optimum recovery odds for the experimental animals—you, in this case."
Jeff snorted. "But still, we're just experimental animals, from your viewpoint," he said sharply.
"Notjustexperimental animals," Schiml snapped angrily. "You'retheexperimental animals. Working with human beings isn't the same as working with cats and dogs and monkeys—far from it. Dogs and cats are stronger and tougher, more durable than humans, which is why they're used for preliminary work of great success. But basically, they're expendable. If something goes wrong, that's too bad. But we've learned something, and the dog or cat can be sacrificed without too many tears. But we don't feel quite the same about human beings."
"I'm glad to hear that," said Jeff sourly. "It makes me feel better."
"I'm not trying to be facetious. I mean it. We're not ghouls. We don't have any less regard for human life than anyone else, just because we're responsible for some human death in the work we're doing. For one thing, we study every human being we use, try to dig out his strengths and weaknesses, physical and mental. We want to know how he reacts to what, how fast he recuperates, how much physical punishment his body can take, how far his mental resiliency will extend. Then when we know these things, we can fit him into the program of research which will give him the very best chance of coming out in one piece. At the same time, he will fill a spot that we need filled. No, there's no delight here in taking human life or jeopardizing human safety."
They turned abruptly off the corridor and entered a small office. Schiml motioned Jeff to a chair, sat himself down behind a small desk and began sorting through several stacks of forms. The room was silent for a moment. Then the doctor punched a button on the telephone panel.
When the light blinked an answer to him, he said: "Gabe? He's here. Better come on up."
Then he flipped down the switch and leaned back, lighting a long, slender cigar and undoing the green robe around his neck.
Jeff watched him, still puzzling over what he had just said. The doctor seemed so matter-of-fact. What he had said made sense, but somewhere in the picture there seemed to be a gaping hole. "This sounds like it's a great setup—for you doctors and researchers," he said finally. "But what's it leading to? What good is it doing? Oh, I know, it increases your knowledge of men's minds, but how does it help the man in the street? How does it actually helpanyone, in the long run? How do you ever get the government to back it with the financial mess they're facing in Washington?"
Schiml threw back his head and laughed aloud. "You've got the cart before the horse," he said, when he got control of his voice. "Support? Listen, my lad, the government is running itself bankrupt just to keep our research going. Did you realize that?Bankrupting itself!And why? Because unless our work pays off—and soon—there isn't going to be any government left. That's why. Because we're fighting something that's eating away at the very roots of our civilization, something that's creeping and growing and destroying."
He stared at Jeff, his eyes wide. "Oh, the government knows that the situation is grave. We had to prove it to them, show it to them time and again, until they couldn't miss it any longer. But they saw it finally. They've seen it growing for a century or more, ever since the end of the Second War. They've seen the business instability, the bank runs and the stock market dives. They've seen the mental and moral decay in the cities. They could see it, but it took statistics to prove that there was a pattern to it, a pattern of decay and rot and putrefaction that's been crumbling away the clay feet of this colossal civilization of ours."
The doctor stood up, paced back and forth across the room and sent blue smoke into the air from the cigar as he walked. "Oh, they support us all right. We don't know for sure what we're fighting, but we do know the answer is in the functioning of the minds and brains of man. We're working against a disease—a creeping disease of men's minds—and we are forced to use men to search those minds, to study them, to try to weed out the poison of the disease. And so we have the Mercy Men to help us fight."
The doctor's lips twisted in a bitter sneer as he sat heavily down on the chair again, crunched the cigar out viciously in the tray. "Mercy Men who have no mercy in their souls, who have no interest nor concern with what they're doing, or what it may be accomplishing. They are interested in one thing only: the amount of money they'll be paid for having their brains jogged loose."
The scorn was heavy in Dr. Schiml's eyes. "Well, we don't care who we have: addicts, condemned murderers, prostitutes, the trash from the skid-row gutters. They're all drawn here, like flies to a dung hill. But they're here on errands of mercy, whether they like it or not, or know it or not. And we take them because they're the only ones who can be bought, and we guard them for all we're worth, so that the goal will be accomplished." He took a deep breath and stared scornfully at Jeff. "That's you I'm talking about, you know."
Jeff's hands trembled as he snuffed out his smoke. He stood up as the corridor door opened, admitting a small, dark-haired man with thick glasses. He was dressed in doctor's whites. Jeff rubbed his chest nervously and took a deep breath, still acutely aware of the stiff card in his shirt front.
"All right," he said hoarsely, "so you're talking about me. When do we get started with this?"
The little dressing room was cramped; it reeked of anesthetic. Jeff walked in, followed by Dr. Schiml and the other doctor, and started removing his shoes. "This is Doctor Gabriel," Schiml said, indicating his myopic colleague. "He'll start you off with a complete physical. Then you'll have a neurological. Come on into the next room as soon as you're undressed." And with that the two doctors disappeared through swinging doors into an inner room.
Jeff removed his shirt and trousers swiftly, carefully folding the file card and stuffing it under the inner sole of his right shoe. It wasn't exactly the perfect hiding place, if anyone were looking for the card. But not once during the conversation had Schiml's eyes strayed curiously to Jeff's shirt front. Either Schiml had not seen him take the card, or else the doctor's self-control was superhuman. And no mention of the dice had been made, either. Jeff gave his shoes a final pat, tossed his clothes on one of the gurneys lining the walls and pushed through the doors into the next room.
It was huge, dome-ceilinged, with a dozen partitions dividing different sections from one another. One end looked like a classroom, with blackboards occupying a whole wall. Another section carried the paraphernalia of a complete gymnasium. The doctors were sitting in a corner that was obviously outfitted as an examination room: the tables were covered with crisp green sheeting, and the walls had gleaming cabinets full of green-wrapped bundles and instruments.
Schiml sat on the edge of a desk. His eyes watched Jeff closely as he lit a cigarette, leaned back and blew rings into the air. Dr. Gabriel motioned Jeff to the table and started the physical without further delay.
It was the most rigorous, painstaking physical examination Jeff had ever had. The little, squinting doctor poked and probed him from head to toe. He snapped retinal-pattern photos, examined pore-patterns, listened, prodded, thumped, auscultated. He motioned Jeff back onto the chair and started going over him with a rubber hammer, tapping him sharply in dozens of areas, eliciting a most disconcerting variety of muscular jerks and twitches. Then the hammer was replaced by a small electrode, with which the doctor probed and tested, bringing spasmodic jerks to the muscles of Jeff's back and arms and thighs. Finally, Dr. Gabriel relaxed, sat Jeff down in a soft chair and retired to a small portable instrument cabinet nearby.
Dr. Schiml put out his smoke and stood up. "Any questions before we begin?"
Jeff almost sighed aloud. Any questions? His nerves tingled all over and his mind was full of conjecture—wild, ridiculous guesses of what they would discover in the testing, of what the results would bring. Suppose they learned about the dice? Suppose they found out that he was a fraud, that he was in the Center on a private mission, a mission of death all his own, and no party to their own missions of death? And yet, if he had to follow through, the kind of work he would be assigned to would depend upon the results of the tests—that seemed sure. But what if they rendered him unconscious, knocked him out, used drugs?
His mind raced frantically, searching for some way of stalling things, some way of slowing down the red tape of testing and assignment, to give him time to complete his own mission and get out. But he knew that already he must have aroused suspicions. Schiml must have suspected that all the cards were not on the table, yet Schiml seemed willing to overlook his suspicions. And the wheels had begun to move more and more swiftly, carrying him to the critical point where he would have to sign a release and take an assignment, or reveal his real purpose for being in the Center. If he were to find Conroe, he must find him before the chips were down.
He stared at Schiml, his mind still groping for something to hang onto. He found nothing. "No. No questions, I guess," he said.
The doctor looked at him closely, then shrugged in resignation. "All right," he said, tiredly. "You'll have a whole series of tests of all kinds: physical stamina, mental alertness, reaction time, intelligence, sanity—everything we could possibly need to know. But I should warn you of one thing." He looked at Jeff, his eyes deadly serious. "All of these future tests are subjective. All of them will tell us about you as a person: how you think, how you behave. Desperately essential stuff, if you're to survive the sort of work we do here. What we find is the whole basis of our assignments."
He paused for a long moment. "You'd be wise to stick to the truth. No embellishments, no fancy stuff. We can't do anything about it if you don't choose to take the advice. But if you falsify, you're tampering with your own life expectancy here."
Jeff blinked, shifting in his seat uneasily.Don't worry about that, Jack, he thought.I won't be around long enough for it to make any difference.Nevertheless the doctor's words were far from soothing. If only Jeff could maintain the fraud throughout the testing, keep his wits about him as the tests progressed. Then he could get back to the hunt as soon as they were through.
He watched the doctor prepare a long paper on the desk. Then the rapid-fire series of questions began: family history, personal history, history of family disease and personal illness. The questions were swift and businesslike, and Jeff felt his muscles relaxing as he sat back. He answered almost automatically. Then: "Ever been hypnotized before?"
Something in Jeff's mind froze, screaming a warning. "No," he snapped.
Schiml's eyes widened imperceptibly. "Part of the testing should be done under hypnosis, for your sake, and for the sake of speed." His eyes caught Jeff's hard. "Unless you have some reason for objecting—"
"It won't work," Jeff lied swiftly, his mind racing. "Psychic block of some kind—induced in childhood, probably. My father had a block against it too." Every muscle in his body was tense, and he sat forward in his seat, his eyes wide.
Schiml shrugged. "It would make the testing a hundred per cent easier on you if you'd allow it. Some of these tests are pretty exhausting and some take a powerful long time without hypnotic-recovery aid. And of course we keep all information strictly confidential—"
"No dice," said Jeff hoarsely.
The doctor shrugged again, glancing over at Dr. Gabriel. "Hear that, Gabe?"
The little doctor shrugged. "His funeral," he growled. He rolled a small, shiny-paneled instrument with earphones to Jeff's side. "We'll start on the less strenuous ones, then. This is a hearing test. Very simple. You just listen, mark down the signals you hear. Keep your eyes on the eyepiece; it records visio-audio correlation times, tells us how soon after you hear a word you form a visual image of it." He snapped the earphones over Jeff's head and moved a printed answer sheet in front of him on the desk. And then the earphones started talking.
There was a long series of words, gradually becoming softer and softer. Jeff marked them down, swiftly, gradually forgetting his surroundings, throwing his attention toward the test. The doctors retired to the other side of the room. They talked to each other in low whispers, until he no longer heard them. There was only the low, insistent whispering in the earphones.
And then the words seemed to grow louder again, but somehow he had lost track of what they meant. He listened, his eyes watching the cool gray pearly screen in the eyepieces. His fingers were poised to write down the words, but he couldn't quite understand the syllables.
They werenonsense syllables, syllables with no meaning. His eyes opened wide, a bolt of suspicion shooting through him, and his hands gripped the arms of the chair as he began to rise.
And then the light exploded in his eyes with such agonizing brilliance that it sent shooting pain searing through his brain. He let out a stifled cry. He struggled and tried to rise from the chair. But he was blinded by the piercing beam. And then he felt the needle bite his arm, and the nonsense words in his ears straightened out into meaningful phrases. A soft, soothing voice was saying: "Relax ... relax ... sit back and relax ... relax and rest...."
Slowly the warmth crept over his body, and he felt his muscles relax, even as the voice instructed. He eased gently back into the chair, and soon his mind was clear of fear and worry and suspicion. He was still, sleeping with the peaceful ease of a newborn child.