cards. "Before we leave this room,you'll be a different man. If you tell us,"--he waggled the cards in hisright hand--"this'll be your new life. You'll have dreams of outdoingevery man on the machine lines and fix your body so you'll have thecapacity to do it. You _will_ do it. You'll become a Superfather. You'llburn to excel them. You'll push on up, become a Superfather-plus. You'llwork with ideas, ways of increasing efficiency, pushing the workmenfaster and faster. And you'll find ways of conditioning them to meet thegreater and greater demands for speed. The city and people'll be at yourfingertips. There'll be rooms of marble and gold for you. Soft carpetsand buttons to push that'll give you any desire instantly. You'll _have_everything and _be_ everything!" He paused and took a deep breath. "Allthis'll be yours if you'll tell us where you got the cards, withoutforcing us to probe your mind with the electric-scalpel...."
With an effort, Twenty-three raised his eyes to the Superfather's face.
"And if I don't tell you?"
"Moving a lever back and forth twice a minute hour after hour, yearafter year. Living in a bare cubicle. No entertainment. No desires." Hepaused. "And no _memories_."
Twenty-three looked over the Superfather's shoulder. The last card, hethought, is in the machine. Escape from the city. They said that, fromoutside. I've got to know. No matter what they put in the machine, thatcard will show first. Even if it's only for ten seconds or thirty orsixty, or however long--I'll know.
"No," he said, "I won't tell you...."
The woman gasped and hid her face. The Superfather, scowling, made amotion.
The two dark men took hold of Twenty-three. They lifted him into thetube.
The Superfather dropped the second pack of cards into the panel andpressed the button. The top closed silently, like a mouth.
Twenty-three's eyes closed; his body waited.
* * * * *
For an instant--blackness, and silence, like a moment after death, or amoment before birth. Then twilight, or dusk, over an ocean. A sky ofpale blue. A shine on the gently surging waters. A scent of clean air.Sea spray. The cool sound of wind.
Then a man's voice, deep and flowing: "You know that there is noentrance or exit to this city. It is sealed off and will always be so.But the dream machine in which you lie has been changed by our agentsinside the city. The last card you dropped into it is different from theothers. These changes have been made so your dream will become areality. Your mind will be transmitted to us here among the hills andunder the trees and by the ocean. And a new body, that we have grown,artificially, from all the elements, a body like the one you will leavebehind, will be waiting for you. You need not be afraid."
Twenty-three felt himself moving forward. Sight and hearing andsensation, without a body. Time dropping away, like a forgetting ofyesterday and tomorrow. There was only this moment. And then he felt thegreat humming surging power of the machine, like an ocean rushing himtoward some unseen shore. He was caught in a gigantic tingling shockwave, and felt like a tremendously outsized torch, lit and flaming, andcarried, still burning, in the green tide of sizzling electricity. Themachine screamed. The machine chanted. The machine raved. Dimly, heheard his wife cry, and above him felt the Superfather scrabbling at themachine, the guards shouting. The machine shrieked and the great tidalwave of power jolted and flung him, white-hot kindling, through air,through sky, up and down! Down upon a white shore, upon creaming sands,leaving him to quiet, to silence, to a pulling away of the tide....
Now the scent of sea came strong into him. He heard the crash and roarof surf and the rustling of leaves and the sweep of wind. There werebird songs and the cries of animals. He saw the spread of rolling hills,saw a stream searching its way among great rocks and swelling androlling full into a river and the river flowing and sinking into thesea. He felt the earth upon his feet and the touch of grass. Breezes,heavy with green from the land eddied all around him and filled his bodyand washed him. He heard his name--saw people coming toward him saying,"Welcome." He felt their arms, embracing him. He saw an open citygrowing among the hills. Its buildings rolled away with the hills of theEarth and became a part of the Earth. The people took him by the handand led him toward it speaking to him of no one hurting the other, andno one locked in a cell and all the walls of this world outside, tumbleddown....
He was happy and repeated the name they spoke to him.
"Paul."
* * * * *
Back in the city, in the room, the wife cried out.
The Superfather, too, seeing the strange look on the face of the maninside the chrysalis of the dream-maker, quickly touched the button thatraised the lid. He bent down and took the wrist of the cold man lyingthere.
"Dead."
"Are you sure?"
The Superfather bent still further down and listened to the chest, andthe wife came close, and they both stood there, half-bent. The mouth ofthe dead man was open and the Superfather listened for any faint whisperof breath. The wife listened. They both looked at each other for a longtime.
Because, from the open mouth of the cold man lying there, faintly, faraway, and fading slowly into silence, they heard quiet laughter, and thesound of many birds and voices, and trees rustling in the lateafternoon. Then it was gone and no matter how the two people bendingthere waited and listened, it was like putting their ear to a whitestone.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends