The Darkess Before Tomorrow, page 6
Abrussi exploded into violent rage. "Do you three punks think you can bluff me?" he shouted.
"If you shoot us, you won’t have anybody to explain those drawings to you,” Sis said, calmly.
Abrussi had known this all along. When he realized that his victims knew it too, the hot anger faded from his eyes. Cold rage came up. When he spoke, the hiss of the king cobra was in his voice.
“All right, if you want it the hard way."
Lifting his voice, he said, “Get Doc Muzzy in here, fast."
From a hidden speaker, a voice answered. “Right away, sir.”
Abrussi eyed the three people standing in front of his desk. “If I was you, I’d take it the easy way,” he said. "Doc Muzzy is a psychiatrist. He went on the hot stuff and couldn’t get enough to satisfy him. He works for me now. He knows ways to make people talk that make even me shudder.”
He looked expectantly at the three.
Again it was Sis who spoke. “As I said before, dead people explain no drawings."
“You won’t be dead,” Abrussi answered. “You will just wish you were!”
The door opened and two men entered. Between them, they had the third man by the elbows, supporting him. Bracelets were visible on the wrists of all three. The man in the middle held their attention. Wearing an apron that once had been white but which was now spotted with many stains, he was partly bent over. From this position, through thick-lensed spectacles, he seemed to peer out at a world that had lost most of its meaning for him.
“This is Dr. Muzzy,” Abrussi said. Contempt that he did not bother to try to conceal was in his voice. He nodded toward Eck, Sis, and Gillian. “They’re yours, Doc.”
“Yes—ah—sir.” Muzzy peered around the room until he located the persons his boss had indicated. He stared at them as if he could not quite make up his mind about them. “What—ah—sir—do you want done with them?”
“Give them your silent treatment,” Abrussi ordered.
“Yes—ah—sir.” A grimace that apparently had been intended to be a smile crossed Muzzy’s face momentarily, then faded as he thought of some difficulty. “But—we—ah—sir-only have two cells. There are three here. The whole purpose of the—ah—experiment—would be defeated if we put two in the same cell.”
Abrussi thought about this. It was a problem he could solve. “Let the woman watch through the windows,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Muzzy said. “Bring them one at a time.” He turned and walked out of, the room without help.
Gillian found himself placed in a small cell that had no furniture and except for a small window up near the ceiling, it had no openings. Light came from some source concealed in the ceiling. Walls, ceiling, and floor were covered with some material that seemed to absorb sound. This material was scuffed and scarred near the floor. Gillian regarded these scuffed places with great doubt. They looked as if they had been made by some previous occupant who had tried to kick his way out.
"When you change your mind and decide to cooperate with—ah—Mr. Abrussi, just nod your head toward the window," Muzzy said. “But don’t give in too soon, or I may think you are not sincere."
The door closed behind him and his two helpers. It made a soft sucking sound as it was pulled shut. When it closed there was no mark to reveal where it had been.
Except for the lack of furniture, the room seemed harmless. It was, however, rather silent. He called out sharply to the psychiatrist. The room seemed to absorb his voice, which became a thin whisper. At this point, the meaning of Abrussi’s words silent treatment became clear. He tried to remember what he had read about such rooms as this—and about what happened to the people who had stayed in them a few hours, for experimental purposes. He could not remember all the details but he was very sure the results had been unpleasant, extremely so. Accustomed to hearing sounds all day and to some degree during sleep, the human ear would begin to behave very strangely when no such sounds were present in its environment.
Now Gillian realized the reason for the scuffed places on the walls near the floor. Some previous occupant had tried to lade his way out of this silent room. But first he had gone crazy.
Shock came up in Gillian, stronger than what he had felt on Mad Mountain.
Movement at the glass panel near the ceiling caught his eye. Looking, he saw that Sis was there. She made signs at him. He interpreted these to mean that Eck was in another cell and that she was going to be forced to watch both of them go crazy.
Her face had horror on it. But it also had resolution in the set of her jaw.
"Don’t give in!" Gillian screamed at her. His words were whispers in the soundproof room. He saw her face disappear from the glass panel.
Outside, in the short corridor on which the doors of the soundproof cells opened, Sis was talking to Abrussi.
"You can make it easy on yourself,” Abrussi said. Two bodyguards stood behind Abrussi. Wiping his hands on his spotted apron, Dr. Muzzy stood beside him.
Looking at Abrussi, Sis Randolph knew, for the first time in her life, the meaning of hate. She hated this man. She hated all he stood for. She hated what was happening to Eck and to Gillian. She hated what was happening to her. But more than any of these, she hated what would happen if Abrussi gained greater power, particularly if he gained it through her.
"You can still go to hell!” she told him.
Abrussi laughed at her defiance. In his own mind, he was sure she would weaken. Meanwhile, why not enjoy teasing her? He jerked his head toward the two panels in the wall. "Your brother is in one cell. Your boy friend is in the other.”
“He’s not my boy friend,” Sis answered. "He is a very fine and splendid man, also something you don’t understand, a gentleman I”
“Before Doc Muzzy gets through with him, you will see what kind of a gentleman he is,” Abrussi answered, amused.
“I’ll watch both the before I explain those drawings to you.” Sis said. Her voice was firm with resolution.
"Will you watch both of diem go crazy?” Abrussi asked.
She caught her breath. She had not thought about this side of the picture, she had not understood the real purpose of the cells. The shock wave that went through her nervous system left marks on her face.
Abrussi grinned again. "When you change you mind, just let Doc know,” he said. He turned to leave, then stopped as Muzzy clutched at his arm m an effort to detain him. "No, Doc. No more of the hot stuff. Later, when you finish with your job here, you can have all you want.”
Helplessly, Muzzy let go of Abrussi’s aim, to stare after him as Abrussi went out the door.
The face that Muzzy turned toward Sis as the door closed had complete hopelessness on it. On his left wrist, the bracelet gleamed.
Turning away from Muzzy, she moved to the second panel. Inside, Eck looked up at her, waved, and grinned. A choked-feeling rose in her throat. He, who would soon be needing courage so desperately himself, was trying to give her courage.'
She moved to the other glass panel. Gillian was sitting on the floor. He also grinned and waved. The choked feeling came up in her throat again, stronger now.
She turned back to Muzzy, fully intending to choke the life out of him, if necessary, to get the keys to the cells, but the psychiatrist had slipped through the door.
A key turned in the lock to the outer door. She braced herself to leap at Muzzy. It was Washington Moses. She held herself in check. His dark face was expressionless as he looked at her.
"I came to see if there is anything you want, Miss—" He paused. “I never did get your last name.*
"Randolph,” Sis said.
- "And the gentlemen in there?” He nodded toward the glass panels.
“One is my brother, Eck Randolph. The other is George Gillian. Washington—” She hesitated as she tried to decide how to word an appeal to this man who wore Abrussi’s bracelet. "Washington, you look like an honest man.”
"I try to be honest, Miss Randolph. Is there anything you want to order from the kitchen?”
"I’m not hungry.” He turned to the door as she spoke. She knew she had to speak now, or never. "Washington—” Desperation came into her voice. "Are you willing to help us?”
He glanced down at the bracelet on his left wrist, then spread his hands in a helpless gesture. His dark eyes studied her. Did she detect sympathy somewhere in their depths?
“Were innocent people! We have to get out of here.” The desperation grew stronger in her voice.
“So many of us are innocent people, Miss Randolph." He opened the door.
“Wait a minute, Washington.” She gestured toward the cells. “They’re hungry in there."
“I have instructions to bring you anything you want from the kitchen. But I have no instructions to bring anything for them. Sorry, Miss Randolph.” The door closed behind him. Washington Moses was gone.
Sis did not feel her body fall. Later, when she found herself on the floor, she knew she had fainted
Chapter Six
When be was first alone in the soundproof cell, Gillian thought that the absence of sound was a little thing. Hours later, he knew better, and liked what he knew much less. He discovered that his ears, over his whole lifetime, had become accustomed to hearing sounds. Now large, now small, now noticed, now unnoticed, now the chirp erf a bird, now a distant whistle, now the sound erf a jet in the sky, now the impatient honk of an automobile horn—always there had been a background of sound which his ears had heard.
Cut off from this background for the first time, the ears reacted at first with a sort of puzzled bewilderment. Gillian’s nervous system translated this lack of a familiar stimulus as something missing. Then what was missing became important. Then anxiety began to grow.
Hie ears began to grow hungry for sound.
When it was not forthcoming, they began to reach for it
When this failed, they began to manufacture it
The result was hallucination.
The ears began to hear sounds that did not exist in their immediate environment.
Hie nervous system became more and more alarmed.
Eventually the sounds that the ears were not hearing were converted by the alarmed nervous system into voices. As this happened, the whole neural structure began to try to go into action on the basis of hallucinated voices: the vocal chords tried to answer what the ears claimed they were hearing, the mind tried to think in terms of what it thought the ears were hearing and what the vocal chords were saying in reply. Since some of the things being heard were frightening, the adrenal glands went into action, manufacturing the fear hormone and pouring it into the bloodstream. The heart began to pound. Then the breathing picked up, eventually becoming more and more labored as the lungs fought for air.
As this whole vast complex developed, the individual would eventually go into wild panic. How far this panic could go, Gillian knew from looking at the scuffed places on the walls near the floor. Some poor devil had tried to kick his way out of here. Gillian tried to keep his nervous system under better control. He found, however, that no matter what he did, he still had to listen to the hallucinated voices. The fact that he knew they were hallucinations made absolutely no difference. He heard them anyhow.
He listened to the voices for a long time, recognizing them as memories becoming audible. Voices of friends long gone out of his childhood, including those of his parents. Some of the voices seemed to come from his infancy. He wondered if he had any right to be remembering these.
If he grew tired of listening to the voices, he could look up at the glass panel and .see the wan face that occasionally appeared there. At first, he knew that the face belonged to Sis Randolph. Then he began to wonder about its identity. Whoever the woman was at the glass panel, she did not look happy to him. When he remembered that she was Sis, he felt very sorry for her, knowing that her ordeal was greater than the one he was undergoing. He was sure she would die before she gave Abrussi the information he wanted. She had something called principles. She was willing to the lor them.
He also had the impression that she was trying to give him courage. He blessed her for this, and then, as some freak of memory gave him back a recent scene, he recalled that Mary, dying, had seemed to find Joe waiting for her. If he died here, would he find Sis waiting for him on the other side? Or would he have to wait for her?
This thinking gave him no comfort. To get it out of his mind, he concentrated on the voices again. It was much better to hear the voices than to look at Sis. Looking at her hurt too much.
Time passed. Gillian did not know how much time had passed. Perhaps hours had gone by, perhaps a day and a night had passed, perhaps time had stopped altogether. He tried to sleep. His ears, hunting for sound with greater and greater hunger, stepped up the volume of the hallucinated voices. The harder he tried to go to sleep, the wider awake he was. He was in a condition that was neither sleep nor waking.' He wondered vaguely how much he could endure before he leaped to his feet and began kicking at the wall
The hours passed.
Occasionally he turned his eyes to the glass panel. Did he know the woman whose face he saw there? Trying to wave at her, he found he hardly had the strength to lift his arm. His breathing was labored. Had they shut off the air into the cell? Were they mixing some subtle gas with the air? Alarmed, he got to his feet. His heart began to pound as If it were about to burst from the rib cage. Panic came up in him. He screamed. The sound of the scream was lost in die silence of the room. He screamed again. He had to get out of here! Had to! Where was the door? Not finding a door, he began to kick at the material on the walls. At the exertion, his heart beat became alarmingly fast Sweat covered his body.
The woman at the glass panel was motioning to him to lie down. What foolishness was this? He had to get out of here! Again he kicked at the wall.
This effort exhausted him. He fell. Again the half-state that was neither sleeping nor waking came over him. The voices started up once more. He listened to them.
The language the voices were speaking intrigued him. He did not know what tongue was being spoken but it was not English. Perhaps it was Spanish. Perhaps it was Italian. Perhaps it was French. It was not German. The harsh gutturals of the German tongue were absent. Instead the language had many sibilances. He tried to remember if he had ever heard this tongue spoken in his life before, decided that he had not.
Some segment of rational thinking returned. He wondered why he should be hallucinating in an unknown tongue. This problem puzzled him but he was too weak to think about it If the voices wanted to talk some foreign language, there was nothing he could do to stop them. If his ears wanted to invent sounds and his nervous system wanted to distort them into some tongue he had never heard, there was nothing he could do about it. Both his ears and his nervous system seemed to have minds of their own. He let these minds work as they wished. So subtly he did not realize when it began, he became aware that he was beginning to see.
This was strange. His eyes were closed. He knew they were closed. But closed or not, he was seeing something. Then he recognized what it was.
It was a cable that seemed to be miles in length. At the far end of it was a huge ball. This was moving so slowly that he was not certain it was moving at all. As he watched, he realized that the cable and the ball were parts of a gigantic pendulum.
This pendulum seemed to be in motion in some void. He did not know where it was. It was not on Earth. It was out in the sky somewhere beyond the Earth but it was not as far away as the Moon. As this thought came into his mind, he realized he could see both the Earth and the Moon.
The Earth was a gigantic dark mass that obscured most of the sky. The Sun was not visible. He assumed it was behind the planet.
Like a vast grandfather's cl ode, the pendulum seemed to be keeping time in the void. Old time or new time? Past time or future time?
Very vaguely and dimly, he was aware of a feeling of honor. This seemed to be coming from the dark mass of Earth so far below him. It seemed to be a definite radiation leaping upward through the sky. Even at this distance, he could feel it. It seemed to him that Earth was groaning as it turned. The whole planet seemed to be suffering.
Fantastic ideas came into his mind. He thought that the 'whole planet was a gigantic boil. Excruciatingly painful to the touch, the boil that was the planet was being lanced. The Earth writhed and twisted at the pain coming from this celestial surgery. In his nightmare world, Gillian decided that the pendulum was a knife cutting into the boil that was a planet.
He could not see the fulcrum of the pendulum. He seemed to be at the fulcrum, looking down. Hissed voices were around him, talking their unknown tongue. He was not listening to what they were saying. He was adjusting the pendulum, making minor changes in its sweep, so it would cut into the boil of the planet quicker and cleaner.
Or was the pendulum creating the boil?
This thought startled George Gillian. It almost make him wake up. Then the horror of real sounds broke into his nightmare. To his overstrained, hungry ears, real sound had the impact of a sudden, painful blow.
A voice was shouting to him. "Wake up! Wake up!”
To shut out the horror of the sound, he tried to cover his ears with his hands.
A woman’s voice frantically told the first voice to be quiet. It went into grumbled silence. Then the woman’s voice was also asking him to wake up but was doing this much more gently. He tried to cover his ears tighter. Even a gentle voice sent painful shocks through a nervous system too long without sound. He did not want to wake up. He wanted to stay where he was and watch the pendulum keeping universal time in the night sky. Gentle hands pulled at his hands, trying to get them away from his ears. He would not permit it
Other sounds came, so violent they blasted through his hands. Oddly, they sounded like the fire of an automatic weapon, perhaps a submachine gun. Then came a blast like the explosion of a hand grenade, hurting his ears and his nervous system so badly that he flinched. It shocked him into opening his eyes.
Sis’ face was directly above him. It was Sis who had spoken to him, it was Sis who was still trying to get his hands away from his ears.
