Collected Short Fiction, page 69
The idling cab was waiting two feet above the street. It was 1615, as the Hedonist looked back at his door to check the milky square:
THE HEDONIST IS UNAVAILABLE
FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT
SEE WARD 482 HEDONIST
He climbed up into the helijet. The rotors sighed overhead.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked softly.
“Hedonic Council Building,” the Hedonist said, staring curiously at the red cap covering the cabbie’s head.
The cabbie swung around. “Great sorrow, man! You aren’t going there!”
The Hedonist stared at the cabbie’s face, stunned.
It was Beth.
“WHAT are you—I mean—how did you—?” the Hedonist spluttered.
“I rented the heli—”
“But you’re under age!”
“I forged an IDisk,” Beth said impatiently, her dark eyes brilliant.
“Forged!” the Hedonist repeated slowly. He rejected the word automatically. He couldn’t believe that one of his young people could have committed a criminal act, and it was impossible to forge an identity disk. The plastic locket with its radiation-sensitive heart of phosphate glass could not be duplicated. Or so he had always believed.
“See here,” he said, struggling to get off the defensive, “you said you were getting married—”
“I am,” she said with quiet determination.
“Your parents don’t know about it!”
“Oh, I haven’t told them.”
“I suppose,” the Hedonist said with quiet sarcasm, “that you haven’t told the man either.”
“He knows,” she said softly. “But he doesn’t believe it yet.”
“You lied to me.” In spite of himself, the Hedonist’s voice sounded hurt.
“You poor, blind fool!” Beth said desperately. “Look! It doesn’t matter. Not now. The only thing that matters is to stay away from the Council. Don’t keep that appointment!”
“The appointment!” the Hedonist exclaimed. He looked at his watch. It was 1620. “I’ve got to hurry.”
“That’s what I’m trying to—”
“Are you going to take me?” the Hedonist asked, “or shall I call another cab?”
“Oh, I’ll take you,” she groaned, swinging around to the front. She punched the buttons expertly. With a muffled roar, the heli rose vertically. When it reached two thousand feet, the jets cut off at the rotor tips and the rear jets cut in. They streaked toward the Old City, rising like a picket fence on the horizon.
The only sound in the cabin was a gentle vibration. The Hedonist sat silent, turning words over and peering under them: forgery, deceit, disrespect. Was the younger generation capable of this? If these hedonically trained young people were not free from immoral and criminal tendencies, then hedonics was a failure.
“How did you know,” he asked, “that I was going to the Council Building?”
“I’ve been watching all day.”
“Spying!” the Hedonist said with horror in his voice.
She shrugged. “If you want to call it that. A good thing, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“That man. The one who called himself Gomer Berns. He was an agent of the Council.”
An agent. The Hedonist tasted the word gingerly. It had extensions and implications. “How do you know?”
“He’s been watching you for days. And I’ve been watching him. He’s talked to the Council secretary three times, once in person. Then, today, he staged this scene.”
“How do you know what he was talking about?”
“I wired the cottage days ago,” she said disgustedly. “When he tossed out the grenade and sneaked away, I was afraid it might be something more deadly. Then I realized what it was. I followed him, but I wasn’t quite quick enough.”
“For what?”
“He’d already dropped the tape into the mail tube.”
“Tape?”
Beth reached onto the seat beside her and flicked something over the back of the seat into the Hedonist’s lap. He picked it up and frowned at it. It was a flat, opaque, plastic box about half an inch deep, two inches wide, and three inches long. The back was sticky. He turned it over. Projecting a fraction beyond the box was Berne’s clear, plastic I Disk.
He turned it back over, bewildered. Something clicked and moved under his fingers. The box fell open. Inside was a tiny empty reel; there was a spindle for another. Printed circuits were a maze against the plastic.
The thing was a miniature recorder, equipped to pick up both sight and sound. The lens—for some reason—had been disguised as an IDisk. Gomer Berns’s IDisk.
“Where did you get this?” he asked suddenly.
“Where do you suppose?”
A sudden flash of apprehension turned the Hedonist’s stomach cold. “You said he was an agent. What did you—”
“He’s dead,” Beth said calmly.
FOR a moment, the Hedonist wondered whether the heli had plunged out of control, and then his hedonic reflexes caught him and set him firmly back in place. His pulse slowed, his adrenals stopped discharging. “You killed him,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It was an accident, I suppose,” she said thoughtfully, “although I can’t say for certain. I was mad enough to kill him. I tried to stop him from dropping the tape, you see, and he pulled out a knife. The cast made him clumsy. When I twisted his arm, he stabbed himself.”
“Go back! Quick!” the Hedonist shouted. “He might still be alive.”
She shook her head. “He’s dead all right.”
The Hedonist groaned and passed his hand over his face. “I’ll have to certify you for surgery,” he heard his voice staying distantly. “No!” he told himself, sitting up straight again. “I can’t do it.”
Beth sighed. “I was hoping you would say that. It’s all right. Nobody saw me.”
The Hedonist shuddered. He couldn’t believe the immorality he was hearing. “You’ll have to undergo treatment,” he said nervously.
Beth laughed. “All you want.”
The Hedonist looked down at his hands. He still held the recorder. He shuddered again, pressed the button that reeled down the right window, and tossed the plastic thing through. He watched it spin through the air until it disappeared below. He wiped his hands on his shorts as if to cleanse them of an invisible stain. Forgery, deceit, theft and murder. But the stain would not come off. It was his fault. It was his duty to protect the bewildered girl. For a wild moment he found himself thinking of how lovely she had been when they awoke only that morning—of how she looked in his scarlet pajama tops.
“Now,” she said, sounding not at all bewildered, “you see why you can’t keep that appointment with the Council.”
He came back to reality. “Because you killed Berns?”
“No, because he was their agent. Can’t you see what they’re trying to do? They want to certify you—”
“They can’t do that,” the Hedonist protested. “I’m not unhappy.”
“When they get through with you,” Beth said grimly, “you will be.”
“But why—they’ve got no reason—”
“When have they needed a reason? They want to get rid of you. Why, I don’t know. But there could be a hundred reasons. For some reasons you’re dangerous to them. If you want to stay alive, you’ve got to stop judging everyone else by yourself.”
It was a web of nonsense. The Hedonist didn’t believe a word of it. Beth had lied to him before without raising her blood pressure a fraction of a point. She was capable of anything. It had to be lies.
But there had been-gelatin fragments on his floor. And he had held a miniature recorder in his hands, and it had a lens shaped like an IDisk. Or had he? Was it delusion?
He glanced at his watch: 1629.
THE Council Building was a flat-topped spire a thousand feet below. He could see the large “HC” painted across the roof. Around it were the deep, darkening canyons that separated the buildings from its shorter neighbors.
The Old City was little frequented now. Industry was decentralized into small, automatic factories near their markets, and the population had spread far out into almost autonomous suburbs. The parts of the Old City left standing were used only for the functions arid services which could not be decentralized: government, major hospitals, and interplanetary commerce.
“Take me down,” the Hedonist said.
“But—” Beth began, swinging around frantically.
“Down!” he repeated firmly. “I have an appointment in four minutes. I’m going to keep it.” He had to accept it as reality, not delusion. But he was ready for the Council, if he could get Beth away and out of danger.
She sighed hopelessly. “All right.” She punched buttons savagely. The rear jets cut out. They dropped in a long swooping descent that clutched the Hedonist’s throat, but at the last minute the rotor’s tip jets caught and the heli dropped lightly to the roof.
The little devil! the Hedonist thought. She did that on purpose. “Go home!” he said, stepping down from the cab and standing on the roof. The rotors twisted slowly above his head. “Tell your mother to give you an alibi for the time of Berns’ death.”
“An alibi?” she asked. “What’s that?”
The diabolical innocent! “A statement that you were home at that time. She’s to lie about it. Tell her I said so. And tell her to make herself believe that it’s true. As for you—Don’t worry! I’ll take care of everything.”
“Yes, Hedonist,” she said obediently.
“Now get out of here!” he said brutally. “I don’t want to see you again.” He knew he was lying and the knowledge troubled him. He did want to see her again.
He stepped back before he could see the expression on her face, and he watched the heli lift from the roof. The rear jets caught quickly with an orange flame that swiftly turned blue and then became a mere wavering of the air.
Except for him, the paved roof was empty. The Hedonist turned and walked to the elevator housing. As he approached, the doors slid open. He stepped in, turned to face the front, and the doors began to close.
“Twent—” he began, but before he had finished, the car started down.
The Hedonist counted the floors as they flashed by. He counted backwards from seventy-five, swiftly, for the drop was faster than the one in the heli. When he reached thirty-two, the car slowed suddenly. “Thirty-one,” he counted. “Thirty. Twenty-nine.”
On that number, the elevator stopped. The Hedonist considered the implications. Without instructions from him, the elevator had brought him to the twenty-ninth floor. That was true efficiency. But then the Council was efficient.
The door remained closed. It refused to open. The Hedonist looked at his watch: 1633. When the sweep second hand reached the top of the dial and went a little past, the doors parted.
Real precision, the Hedonist thought, and stepped out into a deserted hallway.
There were doors on both sides of the corridor, but 2943 was opposite the elevator. There was a sign on the door. Like his own, it said: COME IN AND BE HAPPY.
On the door at waist level was a button. The Hedonist shrugged and pushed it. The door slid open. The room beyond was an ordinary waiting room, well-lighted, neat. Chairs lined each wall. Beside an inner door was a desk. The room was deserted.
The place was silent. Completely, absolutely silent. The only sound the Hedonist could hear was his breathing and the internal workings of his body.
He stepped into the room.
He stepped into bedlam.
VI
THE BEDLAM TEST
THE sound was deafening. That was the first thing he noticed. Or, no, it wasn’t the first thing. The sound was even louder because his eyes had squeezed shut automatically at the first flash of brightness. He waited and felt behind him with one hand. The wall was smooth. The door was closed.
The noise, he thought, was a recording of every sound ever made. He could hear drums, hammers, a chorus of machines; he heard raspings, scrapings, gratings, screeches, horns, explosions, voices screams, shouts.
He concentrated on identifying the sound, not shutting it out. It seemed to cover the whole range of audibility, from 15 cycles per second to more than 20,000 cycles. It was loudest, though, in the middle high tones. That was natural enough. The ear was most sensitive for those frequencies.
Question: was the sound objective or subjective?
Unless it had been set off by his stepping into the room, it had to be subjective. Not even the finest interrupter could phase out everything. And he hadn’t heard a sound.
Ordinarily, the tympanic muscles would have contracted reflexively to protect the inner ear. They hadn’t. Presumption: his sensitivity had been increased or the receptors of the inner ear themselves were being stimulated.
He concentrated on the 1,000 to 4,000 cycle range and reduced the sensitivity of the ear. Slowly the sound diminished. What he had been hearing was the molecular motion of the air particles itself.
He could hear the voice now. He tried to distinguish the words. Slowly he made it out.
“This is a test,” the voice said. “Find your way to the inner room. When you open that door, the test will be over. The test can be discontinued any time you wish. If you desire to do so, lie down on the floor and cover your eyes and ears.”
The Hedonist did not even consider the possibility. It was not only against his nature to surrender, but he suspected that passing the test was vital.
Slowly he opened his eyes, squinting to keep down the intolerable glare. But the light had dimmed. As he opened his eyes wider, the light flared up, and the eyes snapped shut. He opened them a slit; the light was dim and gray. He opened them a little wider; the light blazed. The light—or his sensitivity to it—was keyed to the width his eyes were opened. After a little experimentation, he discovered the optimum width which admitted the most light without risking blindness.
The room had changed. It was no longer a waiting room. It was his own room, and he was leaning so far backward that he was going to fall over into the necessary. He caught himself and straightened up and almost pitched forward on his face.
Illusion, he told himself. The room tilted, not me. But it was more difficult to convince his eyes of their mistake.
Which way had the inner door been when he looked into the room from the corridor? If this was the same room, and his senses brought him only illusions, the door was directly in front of him about four paces. He hadn’t moved.
He felt behind him again to make sure. His hand dipped to the wrist in semi-liquid slime. He smelt a strong odor of decay.
He pulled out his hand, resisting the impulse to shake off the slime, and took one step forward, concentrating on the testimony of his semicircular canals and the sense organs in the muscles, tendons, joints, and skin. The room blinked and changed.
HE WAS on a blue desert. The sand was harsh and gritty under his feet. The scorching wind picked it up and threw it against his face and into his eyes. He could taste it, strong and alkaline, between his teeth. Overhead a huge, orange sun burned down on him.
The Hedonist ignored everything. He didn’t blink or rub his face or eyes or try to cover his head. He knew what he was experiencing now. This was the sensies without the cumbersome equipment they needed. This was sensation transmitted to the nerves themselves. But as long as he refused to believe in the reality of the illusion, he had beaten the test.
Question: what would the next scene be?
Something stirred behind one of the blue dunes. The Hedonist didn’t wait to find out what it was. He took another step, concentrating, as before, on the kinesthetic report of his leg and hip muscles to keep him moving in a straight line.
The floor rocked under him. It quivered like gelatin. It was insecurity. There were tall buildings all around him. They were tumbling. He could smell dust in the air. Great masses of masonry were shaken from the buildings by the earthquake, and they fell toward him, turning, growing larger . . .
HE TOOK another step. Now he was falling. He was turning and twisting through the air, hurtling toward the distant pavement. Air became resistant, buffeted him, tugged at his clothes. The pavement came up to meet him . . .
He took another step. Everything went black. He stood still, trying to see and there was nothing to see, trying to pierce the meaning of the illusion. Or was it an illusion?
The fears the test had played on had not been the learned fears but the old fears, the instinctive ones: the familiar twisted, the completely alien, falling things, and the firm Earth shaking, falling. Baby fears, never forgotten.
What now? Only the dark?
Close to the floor, something hissed. Something moved over his foot, slowly. Something long and thin. There was a second hiss. A third. Things brushed against his bare legs.
Snakes! the Hedonist thought. Snakes in the dark!
Slowly they became luminescent. They glowed in the darkness, lifting in front of him, weaving wickedly. They were all colors: green, red, blue, violet, yellow, orange. One of the snakes was poising itself to strike.
The Hedonist reached out and pressed its diamond-shaped head.
The door opened.
THREE men were sitting at the far A end of a long table. They looked young, but the youngest of them, the Hedonist knew, was ten years older than he was. They had been the first men elected to the Council; they had held office ever since.
The room was big and windowless, paneled in dark, imitation wood. On the right wall was a door, which should be a necessary. There was a faint glimmering in the air in front of the Council. It could be nothing else but a missile-barrier. It would be airtight, too. The Council was being very careful.
The chairman sat at the very end. He had a pleasant blond face. He was a simple, not particularly intelligent man, who could never have become a hedonist except by legislation.
