Alone Against Tomorrow Part 24

They could not chance roaming the universe with those Others somewhere. Somewhere...waiting.

They had formed the invers.p.a.ce net, joining it with the doggie-guards. And they had hooked the system in with the scanners; and they had wired the scanners to the big, dull eye in the ceiling of the Quonset.

Then they had set Ferreno to watching it.

At first Ferreno had watched the thing constantly. Waiting for it to make the disruptive noise he was certain it would emit. Breaking the perpetual silence of his bubble. He waited for the bloodiness of its blink to warp fantastic shadows across the room and furniture. He even spent five months deciding what shape those shadows would take, when they came.

Then he entered the period of nervousness. Jumping for no reason at all, to stare at the eye. The hallucinations: it was blinking, it was ringing in his ears. The sleeplessness: it might go off and he would not hear it.

Then as time progressed, he grew unaware of it, forgot it existed for long periods. Till it had finally come to the knowledge that it was there; a dim thing, an unremembered thing, as much a part of him as his own ears, his own eyes. He had nudged it to the back of his mind-but it was always there.

Always there, always waiting, always on the verge of disruption.

Ferreno never forgot why he was there. He never forgot the reason they had come for him. The day they had come for him.

The evening had been pale and laden with sound. The flits clacking through the air above the city, the crickets in the gra.s.s, the noise of the holograph from the living room of the house.

He had been sitting on the front porch, arms tight about his girl, on a creaking porch glider that smacked the wall every time they rocked back too far. He remembered the taste of the sweet-acidy lemonade in his mouth as the three men stepped out of the gloom.

They had come up onto the porch.

"Are you Charles Jackson Ferreno, age nineteen, brown hair, brown eyes, five feet ten, 158 pounds, scar on right inner wrist?"

"Y-yes...why?" he had stammered.

The intrusion of these strangers on a thing as private as his love-making had caused him to falter.

Then they had grabbed him.

"What are you doing? Get your hands off him!" Marie had screamed.

They had flashed an illuminated card at her, and she had subsided into terrified silence in the face of their authority. Then they had taken him, howling, into a flit-black and silent -and whirled him off to the plasteel block in the Nevada desert that had been Central s.p.a.ce Service Headquarters.

They had hypno-conditioned him to operate the invers.p.a.ce communicators. A task he could not have learned in two hundred years-involving the billion alternate dialing choices -had they not planted it mechanically.

Then they had prepared him for the ship.

"Why are you doing this to me? Why have you picked me!" he had screamed at them, fighting the lacing-up of the pressure suit.

They had told him. The Mark Lx.x.xII. He had been chosen best out of forty-seven thousand punched cards whipped through its platinum vitals. Best by selection. An infallible machine had said he was the least susceptible to madness, inefficiency, failure. He was the best, and the Service needed him.

Then, the ship.

The nose of the beast had pointed straight up into a cloudless sky, blue and unfilmed as the best he had ever known. Then a rumble, and a scream, and the pressure as the ship had raced into s.p.a.ce. And the almost imperceptible wrenching as the ship had slipped scudwise through invers.p.a.ce. The travel through the milky pinkness of that not-s.p.a.ce. Then the gut-pulling again, and there! off to the right through the port-that bleak little asteroid with its Quonset blemish.

When they had set him down and told him about the enemy, he had screamed at them, but they had pushed him back into the bubble, had sealed the pressure-lock, and had gone back to the ship.

They had left The Stone, then. Rushing up till they had popped out of sight around a bend in s.p.a.ce.

His hands had been bloodied, beating against the resilient plasteel of the pressure-lock and the vista windows.

He never forgot why he was there.

He tried to conjure up the enemy. Were they horrible sluglike creatures from some dark star, spreading a ring of viscous, poisonous fluid inside Earth's atmosphere; were they tentacled spider-men who drank blood; were they perhaps quiet, well-mannered beings who would sublimate all of man's drives and ambitions; were they...

He went on and on, till it did not matter in the slightest to him. Then he forgot time. But he remembered he was here to watch. To watch and wait. A sentinel at the gate of the Forever, waiting for an unknown enemy that might streak out of nowhere bound for Earth and destruction. Or that might have died out millennia before-leaving him here on a worthless a.s.signment, doomed to an empty life.

He began the hate. The hate of the men who had consigned him to this living death. He hated the men who had brought him here in their ship. He hated the men who had conceived the idea of a sentinel.

He hated the Mark computer that had said: "Get Charles Jackson Ferreno only!"

He hated them all. But most of all he hated the alien enemy. The implacable enemy who had thrown fear into the hearts of the men.

Ferreno hated them all with a bitter intensity verging on madness, itself. Then, the obsession pa.s.sed. Even that pa.s.sed.

Now he was an old man. His hands and face and neck wrinkled with the skin-folding of age. His eyes had sunk back under ridges of flesh, his eyebrows white as the stars. His hair loose and uncombed, trimmed raggedly by an ultrasafe shaving device he had not been able to adopt for suicide. A beard of unkempt and foul proportions. A body slumped into a position that fitted his pneumo-chair exactly.

Thoughts played leapfrog with themselves. Ferreno was thinking. For the first time in eight years- since the last hallucination had pa.s.sed-actually thinking. He sat humped into the pneumo-chair that had long ago formed itself permanently to his posture. The muted strains of some long since overfamiliarized piece of taped music humming above him. Was the horrible repet.i.tion Vivaldi's Gloria Ma.s.s or a s.n.a.t.c.h of Monteverdi? He fumbled in the back of his mind, in the recess where this music had lived for so long- consigned there by horrible repet.i.tion.

His thoughts veered before he found the answer. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the watching.

Beads of perspiration sprang out, dotting his upper lip and the receding arcs of spa.r.s.e hair at his temples.

What if they never came?

What if they had gone already and through some failure of the mechanisms he had missed them? Even the subliminal persistence of the revolving scanners' workings was not a.s.surance enough. For the first time in many years he was hearing the scanners again, and did they sound right?

Didn't...they...sound...a...bit...off?

They didn't sound right! My G.o.d, all these years and now they weren't working! He had no way of repairing them, no way of getting out of here, he was doomed to lie here till he died-his purpose gone!

Oh My G.o.d! All these years here nowhere and my youth gone and they've stopped running and no-good d.a.m.ned things failing now and the aliens've slipped through and Earth's gone and I'm no good here and it's all for nothing and Marie and everything...

Ferreno! Good G.o.d, man! Stop yourself!

He grabbed control of himself abruptly, lurchingly. The machines were perfect. They worked on the basic substance of invers.p.a.ce. They couldn't go wrong, once set running on the pattern.

But the uselessness of it all remained.

His head fell into his shaking hands. He felt tears welling up behind his eyes. What could one puny man do here, away from all and everyone? They had told him more than one man would be dangerous. They would kill each other out of sheer boredom. The same for a man and a woman. Only one man could remain in possession of his senses, to tickle out the intricate warning on the invers.p.a.ce communicator.

He recalled again what they had said about relief.

There could be none. Once sealed in, a man had begun the fight with himself. If they took him out and put in another man, they were upping the chances of a miscalculation-and a failure. By picking the very best man by infallible computer, they were putting all their eggs in one basket-but they were cutting risk to the bone.

He recalled again what they had said about a machine in his place.

Impossible. A robot brain, equipped to perform that remarkable task of sorting the warning factors, and recording it on the invers.p.a.ce communicators-including any possible ramifications that might crop up in fifty years-would have to be fantastically large.

It would have had to be five hundred miles long by three hundred wide. With tapes and back-up circuits and tranversistors and punch-checks that, if laid end to end, would have reached halfway from The Stone to Earth.

He knew he was necessary, which had been one of the things that had somehow stopped him from finding a way to wreck himself or the whole Quonset during those twenty-four years.

Yet it still seemed so worthless, so helpless, so unnecessary. He didn't know, but he was certain the Quonset bubble would inform them if he died or was helpless. Then they would try again.

He was necessary, if...

If the enemy was coming. If the enemy hadn't already pa.s.sed him by. If the enemy hadn't died long ago. If, if, if!

He felt the madness waking again, like some horrible monster of the mind.

He pressed it back with cool argument.

He knew, deep inside himself, that he was a symbol. A gesture of desperation. A gesture of survival for the peoples of Earth. They wanted to live. But did they have to sacrifice him for their survival?

He could not come to an answer within himself.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps not. Either way, it just happened he had been the man.

Here at this junction of the galaxies; in this spot of most importance; here he was the key to a battle that must someday be fought.

But what if he was wasted? What if they never came? What if there was no enemy at all? Only supposition by the learned ones. Tampering with the soul and life of a human being!

G.o.d! The horror of the thought! What if...

A soft buzz accompanied the steady ruby glow from the eye in the ceiling.

Ferreno stared, open-mouthed. He could not look up at the eye itself. He stared at the b.l.o.o.d.y film that covered the walls and floor of the Quonset. This was the time he had waited twenty-four years to come!

Was this it? No strident noises, no flickering urgency of the red light. Only a steady glow and a soft buzz.

And at the same time he knew that this was far more effective. It had prevented his death from heart attack.

Then he tried to move. Tried to finger the forty-three keys of the invers.p.a.ce communicator on the underarm of the pneumo-chair. Tried to translate the message the way it had been impressed sub-cortically in his mind, in a way he could never have done consciously.

He was frozen in the seat.

He couldn't move. His hands would not respond to the frantic orders of his brain. The keys lay silent under the chair arm, the warning unsent. He was totally incapacitated. What if this was a dud? What if the machines were breaking down from the constant twenty-four years of use? Twenty-four years -and how many men before him? What if this was merely another hallucination? What if he was going insane at last?

He couldn't take the chance. His mind blocked him off. The fear was there. He couldn't be wrong, and send the warning now, crying wolf.

Then he saw it, and he knew it was not a dud.

Far out in the ever-dark dark of the s.p.a.ce beyond The Stone, he could see a spreading point of light piercing the ebony of the void. And he knew. A calmness covered him.

Now he knew it had not been waste. This was the culmination of all the years of waiting. The privation, the hunger of loneliness, the torture of boredom, all of it. It was worth suffering all that.

He reached under, and closed his eyes, letting his hypnotraining take over. His fingers flickered momentarily over the forty-three keys.

That done, he settled back, letting his thoughts rest on the calmed surface of his mind. He watched the spreading points of light in the vista window, knowing it was an armada advancing without pause on Earth.

He was content. He would soon die, and his job would be finished. It was worth all the years without. Without anything good he would have known on Earth. But it was worth all of it. The struggle for life was coming to his people.

His night vigil was finally ended.

The enemy was coming at last.

Lonelyache

THE FORM OF THE HABIT she had become still drove him to one side of the bed. Despite his need for room to throw out arms, legs in a figure-4, crosswise angled body, he still slept on only one side of the big double, bed. The force of memory of her body there, lying huddled on the inside, together cuddled body- into-body, a pair of question marks, whatever arrangement it might have been from night to night-still, her there. Now, only the memory of her warmth beside him kept him prisoner on his half. And reduced to memories and physical need for sleep, he retired to that slab of torture as seldom as possible. Staying awake till tiny hours, doing meaningless things, laughing at laughers, cleaning house for himself till the pathological tidiness made him gibber and caper and shriek within his skull and soul, seeing movies that wandered aimlessly, hearing the vapors of night and time and existence pa.s.sing by without purpose or validity. Until finally, crushed by the weight of hours and decaying bodily functions, desperately needing recharge, he collapsed into that bed he loathed.

To sleep on one side only.

To dream his dreams of brutality and fear.

This was the dream, that same d.a.m.ned recurrent dream, never quite the same dream-but on the same subject, night after night, chapter after chapter of the same story: as if he had bought a book of horror stories; they would all be on one theme, but told differently; that was the way with this string of darkside visions.

Tonight came number fourteen. A clean-cut collegiate face proudly bearing its wide, amiable grin.

A face topped by a sandy brush-cut and light, auburn eyebrows, giving that soph.o.m.oric countenance a giggly, innocent vividness instantly conveying friendship. Under other circ.u.mstances Paul knew he could be close friends with this guy. Guy, that was the word he used, even in the dream, rather than fellow, or man, or-most accurately-a.s.sa.s.sin. In any other place than this misty nightmare, with any other intent than this one, they might have lightly punched each other's biceps in camaraderie and hey, how the h.e.l.l are you'd each other. But this was the dream, latest installment, and this college guy was number fourteen.

Latest in an endless, competent string of pleasant types sent to kill Paul.

The plot of the dreams was long since formulated, now merely suggested by rote in the words and deeds of the players: (sections indefinite, details muzzy, transitions blurred, logic distorted dream-style) Paul had been a member of this gang, or group, or bunch of guys, whatever. Now they were after him. They were intent on killing him. If they ever came at him in a group, they would succeed. But for some reason that made sense only in the dream, they were a.s.signed the job one by one. And as each sweet human being tried to tip him the black spot, Paul killed him. One after another, by the most detailed, violently brutal and gut-wrenching means available, he killed the killers. Thirteen times they had come against him-these men who were decent and pleasant and dedicated, whom he would have been proud to call his friends under other circ.u.mstances-and thirteen times he had escaped a.s.sa.s.sination.

Two or three or-once-four in a night, for the past several weeks (and that he had only killed thirteen till now bore witness to the frequency with which he avoided sleep entirely, or crashslept himself into exhaustion so there were no dreams).

Yet the most disturbing part of the dreams was the brutalized combat itself. Never a simple shooting or positive poisoning. Never an image that could be re-told when awakening without bringing a look of shock and horror to the face of Paul's confidants. Always a bizarre and minutely-described affaire de morte.

One of the a.s.sa.s.sins had pulled a thin, desperately-sharp stiletto, and Paul had grappled with the man interminably, slashing at his flesh and the sensitive folds of skin between fingers, till the very essence, the very reality of death by knife became a gagging tremor in his sleeping body. It was as though the sense, the feel of death-in-progress was evoked. More than a dream, it had been a new threshold of anguish, a vital new terror which he would ever after have to support. It was something new to live with. Until finally he had locked the man's hands around the hilt and driven the slim blade into his stomach, deep and with difficulty, feeling it puncture and gash through organs and resisting, rubbery organs. Then pulling it away from the mortally-wounded a.s.sa.s.sin and (did he, or did he suppose he had) used it again and again, till the other had fallen under the furniture. Another had been battered to his knees and dispatched finally, with a smooth, heavy piece of black statuary. Still another had gone screaming, pushed abruptly (Paul with teeth bared, fanglike, vicious animal) from a ledge, twisting and plunging heavily away. The pa.s.sion with which he had watched that body fall, the desire in him to feel the weight of it going down, had been the disgusting detail of that particular segment. Still another had come at Paul with some now-forgotten weapon and Paul had used a tire chain on him, first wrapping it tightly about the a.s.sa.s.sin's neck and twisting till the links broke skin...then flaying the unconscious body till there was no life left in it.

One after another. Thirteen of them, two already tonight, and now number fourteen, this pleasant- enough guy with the rah-rah demeanor, and the fireplace poker in his competent hands. The gang would never let him alone. He had run, had hidden, had tried to avoid killing them by putting himself out of reach, but they always found him. He went at the guy, wrested the poker from him, and jabbed sharply with the piketip of it. He was about to envision where he had thrust that blunt-sharp point, when the phone went off and the doorbell rang-simultaneously.

For a screaming instant of absolute terror he lay there flat on his back, the other side of the bed creased only by a small furrow made by his spastic arm as it had flung itself away from him: the other side of the bed that she had inhabited, that was now untenanted, save for the wispy endtips of the dream streaking away as his arm had done.

While the chime and the bell rang in discordant duo.

Having saved him from seeing what damage he had done the collegiate guy's face. Almost like melodious saviors. Rung in by a watchful G.o.d who allotted only certain amounts of fear and depravity to each sleeptime. Knowing he would pick up the thread of the dream precisely where he had left off, next time out. Hoping he could stave off sleep for a year, two years, so he would not have to find out how the rah-rah type had died. But knowing he would. Listening to the phone and the doorbell clanging at him.

Having let them serve their purposes of wakening him, now fearing to answer them.

He flipped onto his stomach and reached out a hand in the darkness that did not deter him. He grabbed the receiver off its rest and yowled, "Hold it a minute, please," and in one movement flipped aside the clammy sheet, hit the floor and surely fumbled his way to the door. He opened it as the chime went off again, and in the light from the hallway saw only a shape, no person. He heard a voice, made no sense of it, and said impatiently, "C'min, c'min already, for Chri'sake an' shut the door." He turned away and went back to the bed, picked up the receiver he had tossed onto the pillow, and cleared phlegm from his throat as he asked, "Yeah, okay now, who's this?"