4
It seemed incredible, yet Harry Scott knew he had not been mistaken. Ithad been Dr. Webber's face he had seen, a face no one could forget, anunmistakable face. And that meant that it had been Dr. Webber who hadbeen persecuting him.
But why? He had been going to report to Webber when he had run into thatgolden field in the rooming-house hallway. And suddenly things hadchanged.
Harry felt a chill reaching to his fingers and toes. Yes, something hadchanged, all right. The attack on him had suddenly become butcherous,cruel, sneaking into his mind somehow to use his most dreaded nightmaresagainst him. There was no telling what new horrors might be waiting forhim. But he knew that he would lose his mind unless he could find anescape.
He was on his feet, his heart pounding. He had to get out of here,wherever he was. He had to get back to town, back to the city, back towhere people were. If he could find a place to hide, a place where hecould rest, he could try to think his way out of this ridiculous maze,or at least try to understand it.
He wrenched at the door to the passageway, started through, and smashedface-up against a solid brick wall.
He cried out and jumped back from the wall. Blood trickled from hisnose. The door was _walled up_, the mortar dry and hard.
Frantically, he glanced around the room. There were no other doors, onlythe row of tiny windows around the ceiling of the room, pale, ghostlysquares of light.
He pulled the chair over to the windows, peered out through thecobwebbed openings to the corridor beyond.
It was not the same hallway as before, but an old, dirty buildingcorridor, incredibly aged, with bricks sagging away from the walls. Atthe end he could see stairs, and even the faintest hint of sunlightcoming from above.
Wildly, he tore at the masonry of the window, chipping away at the soggymortar with his fingers until he could squeeze through the opening. Hefell to the floor of the corridor outside.
It was much colder and the silence was no longer so intense. He seemedto feel, rather than hear, the surging power, the rumble of manymachines, the little, almost palpable vibrations from far above him.
He started in a dead run down the musty corridor to the stairs and beganto climb them, almost stumbling over himself in his eagerness.
After several flights, the brick walls gave way to cleaner plastic, andsuddenly a brightly lighted corridor stretched before him.
Panting from the climb, Harry ran down the corridor to the end, wrenchedopen a door, and looked out anxiously.
He was almost stunned by the bright light. At first he couldn't orienthimself as he stared down at the metal ramp, the moving strips ofglowing metal carrying the throngs of people, sliding along thethoroughfare before him, unaware of him watching, unaware of any changefrom the usual. The towering buildings before him rose to unbelievableheights, bathed in ever-changing rainbow colors, and he felt his pulsethumping in his temples as he gaped.
He was in the New City, of that there was no doubt. This was the part ofthe great metropolis which had been built again since the devastatingwar that had nearly wiped the city from the Earth a decade before. Thesewere the moving streets, the beautiful residential apartments, followingthe modern neo-functional patterns and participational design which hadcompletely altered the pattern of city living. The Old City stillremained, of course--the slums, the tenements, the skid-rows of themetropolis--but this was the teeming heart of the city, a new home formen to live in.
And this was the stronghold where the not-men could be found, too. Thethought cut through Harry's mind, sending a tremor up his spine. He hadfound them here; he had uncovered his first clues here, and discoveredthem; and even now his mind was filled with the horrible, paralyzingfear he had felt that first night when he had made the discovery. Yet heknew now that he dared not go back where he had come from.
At least he could understand why the not-men might have feared andpersecuted him, but he could not understand the horrible assault thatDr. Webber had unleashed. And somehow he found Dr. Webber's attackinfinitely more frightening.
He seemed to be safe here, though, at least for the moment.
Quickly he moved down onto the nearest moving sidewalk heading towardthe living section of the New City. He knew where he could go there,where he could lock himself in, a place where he could think, possiblyfind a way to fight off Dr. Webber's attack of nightmares.
He settled back on a bench on the moving sidewalk, watching the cityslide past him for several minutes before he noticed the curiousshadow-form which seemed to whisk out of his field of vision every timehe looked.
They were following him again! He looked around wildly as the sidewalkmoved swiftly through the cool evening air. Far above, he could see theshimmering, iridescent screen that still stood to protect the New Cityfrom the devastating virus attacks which might again strike down fromthe skies without warning. Far ahead he could see the magnificent"bridge" formed by the sidewalk crossing over to the apartment area,where the thousands who worked in the New City were returning to theirhomes.
Someone was still following him.
Presently he heard the sound, so close to his ear he jumped, yet sosmall he could hardly identify it as a human voice. "What was it youfound, Harry? What did you discover? Better tell, better tell."
He saw the rift in the moving sidewalk coming, far ahead, a great,gaping rent in the metal fabric of the swiftly moving escalator, as if ahuge blade were slicing it down the middle. Harry's hand went to hismouth, choking back a scream as the hole moved with incredible rapiditydown the center of the strip, swallowing up whole rows of the seats,moving straight toward his own.
He glanced in fright over the side just as the sidewalk moved out ontothe "bridge," and he gasped as he saw the towering canyons of buildingsfall far below, saw the seats tumble end over end, heard the sounds ofscreaming blend into the roar of air by his ears.
Then the rift screamed by him with a demoniac whine and he sank backonto his bench, gasping as the two cloven halves of the strip clangedback together again.
He stared at the people around him on the strip and they stared back athim, mildly, unperturbed, and returned to their evening papers as thestrip passed through the first local station on the other side of the"bridge."
Harry Scott sprang to his feet, moving swiftly across the slower stripsfor the exit channels. He noted the station stop vaguely, but his onlythought now was speed, desperate speed, fear-driven speed to put intoaction the plan that had suddenly burst in his mind.
He knew that he had reached his limit. He had come to a point beyondwhich he couldn't fight alone.
Somehow, Webber had burrowed into his brain, laid his mind open toattacks of nightmare and madness that he could never hope to fight.Facing this alone, he would lose his mind. His only hope was to go forhelp to the ones he feared only slightly less, the ones who had mindscapable of fighting back for him.
He crossed under the moveable sidewalks and boarded the one going backinto the heart of the city. Somewhere there, he hoped, he would find thehelp he needed. Somewhere back in that city were men he had discoveredwho were men and something more.
* * * * *
Frank Manelli carefully took the blood pressure of the sleeping figureon the bed; then turned to the other man. "He'll be dead soon," hesnapped. "Another few minutes now is all it'll take. Just a few more."
"Absurd. There's nothing in these stimuli that can kill him." GeorgeWebber sat tense, his eyes fixed on the pale fluctuating screen near thehead of the bed.
"His own mind can kill him! He's on the run now; you've broken him loosefrom his nice safe paranoia. His mind is retreating, running back tosome other delusions. It's escaping to the safety his fantasy people canafford him, these not-men he thinks about."
"Yes, yes," agreed Dr. Webber, his eyes eager. "Oh, he's on the runnow."
"But what will he do when he finds there aren't any 'not-men' to savehim? What will he do then?"
Webber looked up, frowning a
nd grim. "Then we'll know what he foundbehind the dark door that he opened, that's what."
"No, you're wrong! He'll die. He'll find nothing and the shock willkill him. My God, Webber, you can't tamper with a man's mind like thisand hope to save his life! You're obsessed; you've always been obsessedby this impossible search for something in our society, someundiscovered factor to account for the mental illness, the divergentminds, but you can't kill a man to trace it down!"
"It's too neat," said Webber. "He comes back to tell us the truth, andwe call him insane. We say he's paranoid, throw him in restraint, placehim in an asylum; and we never _know_ what he found. The truth is tooincredible; when we hear it, it must be insanity we're hearing."
The big doctor laughed, jabbing his thumb at the screen. "This isn'tinsanity we're seeing. Oh, no, this is the answer we're following. Iwon't stop now. I've waited too long for this show."
"Well, I say stop it while he's still alive."
Dr. Webber's eyes were deadly. "Get out, Frank," he said softly. "I'mnot stopping now."
His eyes returned to the screen, to the bobbing figure that thepsycho-integrator traced on the fluorescent background. Twenty years ofsearch had led him here, and now he knew the end was at hand.