“This way, please,” he said, taking up the luggage.
They went diagonally across the lobby, into an elevator that hummed faintly as the bellboy closed the door, sent the machine upward.
Ruth took hold of Hal’s arm, gripped it tightly. He patted her hand, feeling a tremor of skin as he touched her. He stared at the back of the bellboy’s green uniform. Irregular radial wrinkles stretched downward from the neck. Hal coughed.
“We turned left on what we thought was Route 25 back there at Meridian,” he said. “We’re headed for Carson City.”
The bellboy remained silent.
“Was that a wrong turn?” asked Ruth. Her voice came out high pitched, strained.
“There is no such thing as a wrong turn,” said the bellboy. He spoke without turning, brought the elevator to a stop, opened the door, took up their bags. “This way, please.”
Hal looked down at his bride. She raised her eyebrows, shrugged.
“A philosopher,” he whispered.
The hall seemed to stretch out endlessly, like a dark cave with a barred window at the end. Through the window they could see night sweeping suddenly over the desert, bright stars clustering along the horizon. A silvery glow shimmered from the corners of the ceiling, illuminating the soft maroon carpet underfoot.
At the end of the hall, the bellboy opened a door, reached in, turned on a light. He stepped aside, waited for Hal and Ruth to enter.
Hal paused in the yellow light of the threshold, smiled down at his bride. He made a lifting motion with his hands. She blushed, shook her head, stepped firmly into the room. He chuckled, followed her into the room.
It was a low-ceilinged oblong space. A double bed stood at the far end, a metal dresser to their right flanked by two partly open doors. Through one door they could see the tile gleam of a bathroom. The other door showed the empty darkness of a closet. The room gave an impression of cell-like austerity. Windows by the bed looked out on the purple of the desert night.
Ruth went to the dresser mirror, began unpinning her corsage. The bellboy put their bags on a stand near the bed. Hal could see Ruth watching the man in the mirror.
“What did you mean ‘no such thing as a wrong turn’?” she asked.
The bellboy straightened. His green uniform settled into a new pattern of wrinkles. “All roads lead somewhere,” he said. He turned, headed for the door.
Hal brought his hand from his pocket with a tip. The man ignored him, marched out, closing the door behind him.
“Well, I’ll be…”
“Hal!” Ruth put a hand to her mouth, staring at the door.
He jerked around, feeling the panic in her voice.
“There’s no door handle on the inside!” she said.
He looked at the blank inner surface of the door. “Probably a hidden button or an electric eye,” he said. He went to the door, felt its surface, explored the wall on both sides.
Ruth came up behind him, clutched his arm. He could feel her trembling.
“Hal, I’m deathly afraid,” she said. “Let’s get out of here and…”
From somewhere, a deep rumbling voice interrupted her. “Please do not be alarmed.”
Hal straightened, turned, trying to locate the source of the voice. He could feel Ruth’s fingernails biting into his arm.
“You are now residents of the Desert Rest Hotel,” said the voice. “Your stay need not be unpleasant as long as you observe our one rule: No gambling. You will not be permitted to gamble in any way. All gambling devices will be removed if you attempt to disobey.”
“I want to leave here,” quavered Ruth. The nightmare quality of the scene struck Hal. He seriously considered for a brief second that he might be dreaming. But there was too much reality here: Ruth trembling beside him, the solid door, the grey wall. “Some crackpot fanatic,” he muttered.
“You may decide to leave,” said the voice, “but you have no choice of where you will go, in what manner or when. Free choice beyond the immediate decision is a gamble. Here, nothing is left to chance. Here, you have the absolute security of pre-determination.”
“What the hell is this?” demanded Hal. “You have heard the rule,” said the voice, “You decided to come here. The die is cast.”
What have I gotten us into? wondered Hal. I should have listened to Ruth when she wanted to go on.
Ruth was trembling so sharply that she shook his arm; he fought down a panic of his own. “Hal, let’s get out of here,” she said.
“Careful,” he said. “Something’s very wrong.” He patted her hand with what he hoped was some reassurance. “Let’s… go… down… to… the… lobby,” he said, spacing his words evenly. He squeezed her hand. She took a shuddering breath. “Yes, I want to go.” And how are we going to do it? he wondered. No handle on the door. He looked to the windows and the night beyond them. Four stories down. “You have decided to go to the lobby?” asked the voice. “Yes,” said Hal.
“Your decision has been entered,” said the voice. “Time was allotted when you entered.”
Time allotted, he thought. Ruth had it pegged: A prison.
“What’s going to happen to us?” she asked. She turned, buried her face against him. “Darling, don’t let anything happen to us.”
He held her tightly, looking around the room.
The hall door swung inward.
“The door just opened,” he said. “Be calm. Don’t let go of my arm.”
He led the way out of the room and to the elevator. No operator in the elevator, but the door closed as soon as they entered. The car descended, came to a smooth stop; the door opened.
People!
The change in the lobby hit them as soon as they left the elevator.
The lobby thronged with people. Silent, watchful people—strolling singly, in couples, in groups.
“I saw you come in and decided at that moment to speak to you.” It was a woman’s voice: old, quavering.
Hal and Ruth turned to their left toward the voice. The speaker was grey-haired with a narrow, seamed face. She wore a blue dress of old-fashioned cut that hung loosely about her body as though she had withered away from it.
Hal tried to speak, found with sudden panic that he could not utter a sound.
“I imagine several of us made the same decision,” said the old woman. Her eyes glittered as she stared at them. “This time fell to me.” She nodded. “Presumably you will not be able to talk to me because you haven’t placed a decision and it does seem somewhat chancey. No matter.”
She shook her grey head. “I know your questions. You’re strays by the look of you. Newlyweds, too, I’d guess. More’s the pity.”
Again, Hal tried to speak, couldn’t. He felt a strange stillness in Ruth beside him. He looked down at her. Ruth’s face had a strained, bloodless appearance.
“We can give you a pretty educated guess as to what this hotel is,” said the old woman. “It’s a kind of a hospital from some far off place. Why it’s located here we don’t know. But we’re pretty certain of what it’s supposed to do: it’s supposed to cure the gambling habit.”
Again the old woman nodded as though at some inner thought.
“I had the habit myself,” she said. “We think the hotel has an aura that attracts gamblers when they come within range. Sometimes it picks up strays like yourselves. But it’s a machine and can’t refine its selection. It considers the strangest things to be gambling!”
Hal remembered the rumbling voice in the room: “No Gambling!”
Behind the woman, in the center of the lobby, a short man in a high-necked collar and suit that had been fashionable in the mid-twenties abruptly clutched his throat. He fell to the floor without a sound, lay there like a mound of soiled laundry.
The nightmare feeling returned to Hal.
From somewhere, the ancient bellboy appeared on the scene, hurried across the lobby, dragged the fallen man from sight around a corner.
“Someone just died,” said the old woman
. “I can see it in your eyes. The time of your death is chosen the moment you enter this place. Even the way you’ll die.” She shuddered. “Some of the ways are not pleasant.”
Coldness clutched at Hal.
The old woman sighed. “You’ll want to know if there’s hope of escape.” She shrugged. “Perhaps. Some just disappear. But maybe that’s another… way.”
With an abrupt wrenching sensation, Hal found his voice. It startled him so that all he could say was: “I can speak.” His voice came out flat and expressionless. Then: “There must be some choice.”
The old woman shook her head. “No. The moment for you to speak—alone or in company—was set when you came in that front door.”
Hal took two quick deep breaths, fought for the power to reason in spite of fear. He gripped Ruth’s arm, not daring to look at her, not wanting the distraction. There had to be a way out of this place. An ace trouble shooter for an electronics instruments factory should be the one to find that way.
“What would happen if I tried to gamble?” he asked.
The old woman shuddered. “The device you chose for gambling would be removed,” she said. “That’s the reason you two mustn’t…” she hesitated “… sleep together.”
Hal took a coin from his pocket, flipped it into the air. “Call it and it’s yours,” he said.
The coin failed to come down.
“You’re being shown the power of this place,” said the old woman. “You mustn’t gamble… the instrument of chance is always removed.”
An abrupt thought washed through Hal’s mind. Would it… He wet his lips with his tongue, fought to keep his face expressionless. It’s crazy, he thought. But no crazier than this nightmare.
Slowly, he took another coin from his pocket.
“My wife and I are going to gamble again,” he said. “We are going to gamble, using the hotel and this coin as the gambling device. The moment of interference is the thing upon which we are gambling.”
He felt an intensification of the silence in the lobby, was extremely conscious of Ruth’s fingers digging into his arm, the curious questioning look on the old woman’s face.
“We are gambling upon the moment when the hotel will remove my coin or if it will remove my coin,” he said. “We will make one of several decisions dependent upon the moment of interference or the lack of interference.”
A deep grinding rumble shook the hotel.
He flipped the coin.
Hal and Ruth found themselves standing alone on a sand dune, moonlight painting the desert a ghostly silver around them. They could see the dark shape of their car on another dune.
Ruth threw herself into his arms, clung to him, sobbing.
He stroked her shoulder.
“I hope they all heard me,” he said. “That hotel is a robot. It has to remove itself when it becomes a gambling device.”
Looking for Something?
Mirsar Wees, chief indoctrinator for Sol III sub-prefecture, was defying the intent of the Relaxation-room in his quarters. He buzzed furiously back and forth from metal wall to metal wall, his pedal-membrane making a cricket-like sound as the vacuum cups disengaged.
“The fools!” he thought. “The stupid, incompetent, mindless fools!”
Mirsar Wees was a Denebian. His race had originated more than three million earth years ago on the fourth planet circling the star Deneb—a planet no longer existing. His profile was curiously similar to that of a tall woman in a floor-length dress, with the vacuum-cup pedal-membrane contacting the floor under the “skirt.” His eight specialized extensors waved now in a typical Denebian rage-pattern. His mouth, a thin transverse slit entirely separate from the olfactory-lung orifice directly below it, spewed forth a multi-lingual stream of invective against the assistant who cowered before him.
“How did this happen?” he shouted. “I take my first vacation in one hundred years and come back to find my career almost shattered by your incompetency!”
Mirsar Wees turned and buzzed back across the room. Through his vision-ring, an organ somewhat like a glittering white tricycle-tire jammed down about one-third of the distance over his head, he examined again the report on Earthling Paul Marcus and maintained a baleful stare upon his assistant behind him. Activating the vision cells at his left, he examined the wall chronometer.
“So little time,” he muttered. “If only I had someone at Central Processing who could see a deviant when it comes by! Now I’ll have to take care of this bumble myself, before it gets out of hand. If they hear of it back at the bureau…”
Mirsar Wees, the Denebian, a cog in the galaxy-wide korad-farming empire of his race, pivoted on his pedal-membrane and went out a door which opened soundlessly before him. The humans who saw his flame-like profile this night would keep alive the folk tales of ghosts, djinn, little people, fairies, elves, pixies…
Were they given the vision to see it, they would know also that an angry overseer had passed. But they would not see this, of course. That was part of Mirsar Wees’ job.
It was mainly because Paul Marcus was a professional hypnotist that he obtained an aborted glimpse of the rulers of the world.
The night it happened he was inducing a post-hypnotic command into the mind of an audience-participant to his show on the stage of the Roxy Theater in Tacoma, Washington.
Paul was a tall, thin man with a wide head which appeared large because of this feature although it really was not. He wore a black tailcoat and formal trousers, jewelled cuff links and chalkwhite cuffs, which gleamed and flashed as he gestured. A red spotlight in the balcony gave a Mephisto cast to his stage-setting, which was dominated by a backdrop of satin black against which gleamed two giant, luminous eyes. He was billed as “Marcus the Mystic” and he looked the part.
The subject was a blonde girl whom Paul had chosen because she displayed signs of a higher than ordinary intelligence, a general characteristic of persons who are easily hypnotized. The woman had a good figure and showed sufficient leg when she sat down on the chair to excite whistles and cat-calls from the front rows. She flushed, but maintained her composure.
“What is your name, please?” Paul asked.
She answered in a contralto voice, “Madelyne Walker.”
“Miss or Mrs.?”
She said, “Miss.”
Paul held up his right hand. From it dangled a gold chain on the end of which was a large paste gem with many facets cut into its surface. A spotlight in the wings was so directed that it reflected countless star-bursts from the gem.
“If you will look at the diamond,” Paul said. “Just keep your eyes on it.”
He began to swing the gem rhythmically, like a pendulum, from side to side. The girl’s eyes followed it. Paul waited until her eyes were moving in rhythm with the swinging bauble before he began to recite in a slow monotone, timed to the pendulum:
“Sleep. You will fall asleep… deep sleep… deep sleep… asleep… deep asleep… asleep… asleep…”
Her eyes followed the gem.
“Your eyelids will become heavy,” Paul said. “Sleep. Go to sleep. You are falling asleep… deep, restful sleep… healing sleep… deep asleep… asleep… asleep… asleep…”
Her head began to nod, eyelids to close and pop open, slower and slower. Paul gently moved his left hand up to the chain. In the same monotone he said, “When the diamond stops swinging you will fall into a deep, restful sleep from which only I can awaken you.” He allowed the gem to swing slower and slower in shorter and shorter sweeps. Finally, he put both palms against the chain and rotated it. The bauble at the end of the chain began to whirl rapidly, its facets coruscating with the reflections of the spotlight.
Miss Walker’s head fell forward and Paul kept her from falling off the chair by grasping her shoulder. She was in deep trance. He began demonstrating to the audience the classic symptoms which accompany this—insensitivity to pain, body rigidity, complete obedience to the hypnotist’s voice.
The show went along i
n routine fashion. Miss Walker barked like a dog. She became the dowager queen with dignified mien. She refused to answer to her own name. She conducted the imaginary symphony orchestra. She sang an operatic aria.
The audience applauded at the correct places in the performance. Paul bowed. He had his subject deliver a wooden bow, too. He wound up to the finale.
“When I snap my fingers you will awaken,” he said. “You will feel completely refreshed as though after a sound sleep. Ten seconds after you awaken you will imagine yourself on a crowded streetcar where no one will give you a seat. You will be extremely tired. Finally, you will ask the fat man opposite you to give you his seat. He will do so and you will sit down. Do you understand?”
Miss Walker nodded her head.
“You will remember nothing of this when you awaken,” Paul said.
He raised his hand to snap his fingers…
It was then that Paul Marcus received his mind-jarring idea. He held his hand up, fingers ready to snap, thinking about this idea, until he heard the audience stirring restlessly behind him. Then he shook his head and snapped his fingers.
Miss Walker awakened slowly, looked around, got up, and exactly ten seconds later began the streetcar hallucinations. She performed exactly as commanded, again awakened, and descended confusedly from the stage to more applause and whistles.
It should have been gratifying. But from the moment he received the idea, the performance could have involved someone other than Paul Marcus for all of the attention he gave it. Habit carried him through the closing routine, the brief comments on the powers of hypnotism, the curtain calls. Then he walked back to his dressing room slowly, preoccupied, unbuttoning his studs on the way as he always did following the last performance of the night. The concrete cave below stage echoed to his footsteps.
In the dressing room he removed the tailcoat and hung it in the wardrobe. Then he sat down before the dressing table mirror and began to cream his face preparatory to removing the light makeup he wore. He found it hard to meet his own eyes in the mirror.