The Great Gray Plague Part 9

"Go away!" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Go away, and leave me alone--whoever you are."

"No. Let me take you by the hand, William Baker. I have come to show you the way back. I have come to lead you back."

"Leave me alone! Whoever you are, leave me alone!" Baker was conscious of his own voice screaming in the black night. And it was not only terror of the unknown presence that made him scream, but the physical pain of crushed bones and torn flesh was sweeping like a torrent through him.

"Don't be afraid of me. You know me. You remember, we met this afternoon. Sam Atkins. You remember, Dr. Baker?"

"I remember." Baker's voice was a painful gasp. "I remember. Now go away and leave me alone. You can do nothing for me. I don't want you to do anything for me."

Sam Atkins. The crystal. Baker wished he could reach the cursed thing and hurl it away from him. That must be how Atkins was communicating with him. Yes, somehow it was possible. He had found no trick, no gimmick. Somehow, the miserable things worked.

But what did Sam Atkins want? He had broken in on a moment that was as private as a dream. There was nothing he could do. Baker was dying. He knew he was dying. There was no medicine that could heal the battering his body had taken. He had been slipping away into peace and release of pain. He had no desire to have it interrupted.

There was no more evidence of Sam Atkins' presence. It was there--and Baker wished furiously that Atkins would let his death be a private thing--but he was not interfering now.

There was the faint suggestion of other presences, too. Baker thought he could pick them out, Fenwick and Ellerbee. They were all gathered to watch him die through the crystals. It was unkind of them to so intrude--but it didn't really matter very much. He began drifting pleasantly again.

"William Baker." The soft voice of Sam Atkins shattered the peaceable realm once more. "We must do some healing before we start back, Dr.

Baker. Give me your hand, and come with me, Dr. Baker, while we touch these tissues and heal their breaks. Stay close to me and the pain will not be more than you can endure."

The night remained dark and there was no sound, but Baker's body arched and twisted in panic as he fought against invisible hands that seemed to touch with fleeting, exploratory pa.s.ses over him.

"I don't want to be healed," he whispered. "There is nothing that can be done. I'm dying. I want to die! Can't you understand that? I want to die! I don't want your help!"

He had said it. And the shock of it jolted even him in the depths of his half-conscious mind. Could a man really _want_ to die?

Yes.

He had forgotten what terror he had left so far behind. He knew only that he wanted to move forever in the direction of the flowing peace.

Like probing fingers, Sam Atkins' mind continued to touch him. It scanned the broken organs of his body, and, in some kind of detached way, Baker felt that he was accompanying Atkins on that journey of exploration, even as Sam had asked.

They searched the skeleton and found the splintered bones. They examined the muscle structure and found the torn and shattered tissue. They searched the dark recesses of his vital organs and came to injury that Baker knew was hopeless.

"You built this once," Sam Atkins' voice whispered. "You can build it again. The materials are all here. The blood stream is still moving. The nerve tissue will carry your instructions. I'll supply the scaffolding--while you build--"

He remembered. Baker examined the long-untouched record of when he had done this before. He remembered the construction of cells, the building of organs, the interconnection of nerve tissue. He felt an infinite sadness at the present ruin. Yes--he could build again.

Sam Atkins' face was like that of a dead man. Across the table from him, Jim Ellerbee and John Fenwick watched silently. Faintly, between them was the crystal-projected image of Baker's body.

Fenwick felt the cold touch of some mysterious unknown p.r.i.c.kle his scalp. Sam Atkins seemed remote and alien, like the pract.i.tioner of ancient and forbidden arts. Fenwick found the question tumbling over and over in his mind, who is this man? He felt as if the very life energy of Sam Atkins was somehow flowing out through the crystal, across s.p.a.ce, to the distant broken body of Bill Baker and was supporting it while Baker's own feeble energy was consumed in the rebuilding of his shattered organs.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Though Fenwick and Ellerbee held their own crystals, Sam had somehow shut them out. They were in faint contact with Baker, but they could not follow the fierce contact that Sam's mind held with him.

Ellerbee's face showed worry and a trace of panic. He hesitantly reached out to touch the immobile figure of Sam Atkins, who sat with closed eyes and imperceptible breath. Fenwick sensed disaster. He arrested the motion of Ellerbee's hand.

"I think you could kill them both," he whispered. The life force of one man, divided between two--it was not sufficient to cope with unexpected shocks to either, now.

Ellerbee desisted. "I've never seen anything like this before," he said.

"I don't know what Sam's doing--I don't know how he's doing it--"

Fenwick looked sharply at Ellerbee. Ellerbee had discovered the crystals, so he and Sam said. Yet Sam was able to do things with them that Ellerbee could not conceive. Fenwick wondered just who was responsible for the crystals. And he resolved that some day, when and if Baker pulled out of this, he would learn something more about Sam Atkins.

Time moved beyond midnight and into the early morning hours of the day, but this meant nothing to William Baker. He was in the midst of eternity. Because the old pattern was there, and the ancient memories were clear, his reconstruction moved at a pace that was limited only by the materials available. When these grew scarce, Sam Atkins showed him how to break down and utilize other structures that could be rebuilt leisurely at a later time. There was remembered joy in the building and, once started, Baker gave only idle wonder to the question of whether this was more desirable than death. He did not know. This seemed the right thing to do.

In the presence of Sam Atkins everything he was doing seemed right, and a lifetime of doubts, and errors, and fears seemed distant and vague.

But Sam said suddenly, "It is almost finished. Just a little farther and you'll have to go the rest of the way alone."

Terror struck at Baker. He had reached a point where he was absolutely sure he could _not_ go on alone without Sam's supporting presence. "You tricked me!" Baker cried. "You tricked me! You didn't tell me I would have to be reborn alone!"

"Doesn't every man?" said Sam. "Is there any way to be born, except alone?"

Slowly, the world closed in about Baker.

Light. Sounds.

Wet. Cold.

The impact of a million idiot minds. The coursing of cosmic-ray particles. The wrenching of Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields.

Old and sluggish memories were renewed, memories meant to be buried for all of his life.

Baker felt as if he were suddenly running down a dark and immense corridor. Behind were all the terrors sp.a.w.ned since the beginning of time. Ahead were a thousand openings of light and safety. He raced for the nearest and brightest and most familiar.

"No," said Sam Atkins. "You cannot go that way again. It is the way you went before--and it led to this--to a search for death. For you, it will lead only to the same goal again."

"I can't go on!" Baker cried. The terrors seemed to be swiftly closing in.

"Take my hand a moment longer," said Sam. "Inspect these more distant paths. There are many of them that will be agreeable to you."

Baker felt calmer now in the renewed presence of Sam Atkins. He pa.s.sed the branching pathway that Sam had forbidden, that had seemed so bright.

He sensed now why Sam had cautioned him against it. Far down, in the depths of it, he glimpsed faintly a dark ugliness that he had not seen before. He shuddered.

Directly ahead there seemed to be the opening of a corridor of blazing brightness. Baker's calmness increased as he approached. "This one," he said.

He heard nothing, but he sensed Sam Atkins' smile, and nod of approval.

He remembered now for the first time why he had wanted to die. It was to avoid the very terrors by which he had been pursued through the dark corridor. All this had happened before, and he had gone down the pathway Sam had forbidden. Somehow, like a circle, it had come back to this very point, to this forgotten experience for which he had been willing to die rather than endure again.

It was very bewildering. He did not understand the meaning of it. But he knew he had corrected a former error. He was back in the world. He was alive again.

Sam Atkins looked up at his companions through eyes that seemed all but dead. "He's going to make it," he said. "We can get the car out and pick up Baker now."