Jim Calder studied the miniature mansion and grounds that sat, carefully detailed, on the table.
"If you slip," said Walters, standing at Jim's elbow, "the whole gang will disappear like startled fish. There'll be another thousand addicts, and we'll have the whole thing to do over again."
Jim ran his hand up the shuttered, four-story replica tower that stood at one corner of the mansion. "I'm to knock at the front door and say, 'May I speak to Miss Cynthia?'"
Walters nodded. "You'll be taken inside, you'll stay overnight, and the next morning you will come out a door at the rear and drive away. You will come directly here, be hospitalized and examined, and tell us everything you can remember. A certified check in five figures will be deposited in your account. How high the five figures will be depends on how much your information is worth to us."
"Five figures," said Jim.
Walters took out a cigar and sat down on the edge of his desk. "That's right—10,000 to 99,999."
Jim said, "It's the size of the check that makes me hesitate. Am I likely to come out of there in a box?"
"No." Walters stripped the cellophane wrapper off his cigar, lit it, and sat frowning. At last he let out a long puff of smoke and looked up. "We've hit this setup twice before in the last three years. A city of moderate size, a quietly retired elderly person in a well-to-do part of town, a house so situated that people can come and go without causing comment." Walters glanced at the model of mansion and grounds on the table. "Each time, when we were sure where the trouble was coming from, we've raided the place. We caught addicts, but otherwise the house was empty."
"Fingerprints?"
"The first time, yes, but we couldn't trace them anywhere. The second time, the house burned down before we could find out."
"What about the addicts, then?"
"They don't talk. They—" Walters started to say something, then shook his head. "We're offering you a bonus because we don't know what the drug is. These people are addicted to something, but what? They don't accept reality. There are none of the usual withdrawal symptoms. A number of them have been hospitalized for three years and have shown no improvement. We don't think this will happen to you—one exposure to it shouldn't make you an addict—but we don't know. We have a lot of angry relatives of these people backing us. That's why we can afford to pay you what we think the risk is worth."
Jim scowled. "Before I make up my mind, I'd better see one of these addicts."
Walters drew thoughtfully on his cigar, then nodded and picked up the phone.
Behind the doctor and Walters and two white-coated attendants, Jim went into the room at the hospital. The attendants stood against the wall. Jim and Walters stood near the door and watched.
A blonde girl sat motionless on the cot, her head in her hands.
"Janice," said the doctor softly. "Will you talk to us for just a moment?"
The girl sat unmoving, her head in her hands, and stared at the floor.
The doctor dropped to a half-kneeling position beside the cot. "We want to talk to you, Janice. We need your help. Now, I am going to talk to you until you show me you hear me. You do hear me, don't you, Janice?"
The girl didn't move.
The doctor repeated her name again and again.
Finally she raised her head and looked through him. In a flat, ugly voice, she said, "Leave me alone. I know what you're trying to do."
"We want to ask you just a few questions, Janice."
The girl didn't answer. The doctor started to say something else, but she cut him off.
"Go away," she said bitterly. "You don't fool me. You don't even exist. You're nothing." She had a pretty face, but as her eyes narrowed and her lips drew slightly away from her teeth and she leaned forward on the cot, bringing her hands up, she had a look that tingled the hair on the back of Jim's neck.
The two attendants moved warily away from the wall.
The doctor stayed where he was and talked in a low, soothing monotone.
The girl's eyes gradually unfocused, and she was looking through the doctor as if he weren't there. She put her head hard back into her hands and stared at the floor.
The doctor slowly came to his feet and stepped back.
"That's it," he told Jim and Walters.
On the way back, Walters drove, and Jim sat beside him on the front seat. It was just starting to get dark outside. Abruptly Walters asked, "What did you think of it?"
Jim moved uneasily. "Are they all like that?"
"No. That's just one pattern. An example of another pattern is the man who bought a revolver, shot the storekeeper who sold it to him, shot the other customer in the store, put the gun in his belt, went behind the counter and took out a shotgun, shot a policeman who came in the front door, went outside and took a shot at the lights on a theater marquee; he studied the broken lights for a moment, then leaned the shotgun against the storefront, pulled out the revolver, blew out the right rear tires of three cars parked at the curb, stood looking from one of the cars to another and said, 'I just can't be sure, that's all.'"
Walters slowed slightly as they came onto a straight stretch of highway and glanced at Jim. "Another policeman shot the man, and that ended that. We traced that one back to the second place we closed up, the place that burned down before we could make a complete search."
"Were these places all run by the same people?"
"Apparently. When we checked the dates, we found that the second place didn't open till after the first was closed, and the third place till the second was closed. They've all operated in the same way. But the few descriptions we've had of the people who work there don't check."
Jim scowled and glanced out the window. "What generally happens when people go there? Do they stay overnight, or what?"
"The first time, they go to the front door, and come out the next morning. After that, they generally rent one of the row of garages on the Jayne Street side of the property, and come back at intervals, driving in after dark and staying till the next night. They lose interest in their usual affairs, and gradually begin to seem remote to the people around them. Finally they use up their savings, or otherwise come to the end of the money they can spend. Then they do like the girl we saw tonight, or like the man in the gun store, or else they follow some other incomprehensible pattern. By the time we find the place and close it up, there are seven hundred to twelve hundred addicts within a fifty-mile radius of the town. They all fall off their rockers inside the same two- to three-week period, and for a month after that, the police and the hospitals get quite a workout."
"Don't they have any of the drug around?"
"That's just it. They must get it all at the place. They use it there. They don't bring any out."
"And when you close the place up—"
"The gang evaporates like a sliver of dry ice. They don't leave any drug or other evidence behind. This time we've got a precise model of their layout. We should be able to plan a perfect capture. But if we just close in on them, I'm afraid the same thing will happen all over again."
"Okay," said Jim. "I'm your man. But if I don't come out the next morning, I want you to come in after me."
"We will," said Walters.
Jim spent a good part of the evening thinking about the girl he'd seen at the hospital, and the gun-store addict Walters had described. He paced the floor, scowling, and several times reached for the phone to call Walters and say, "No." A hybrid combination of duty and the thought of a five-figure check stopped him.
Finally, unable to stay put, he went out into the warm, dark evening, got in his car and drove around town. On impulse, he swung down Jayne Street and passed the dark row of rented garages Walters had mentioned. A car was carefully backing out as he passed. He turned at the next corner and saw the big, old-fashioned house moonlit among the trees on its own grounds. A faint sensation of wrongness bothered him, and he pulled to the curb to study the house.
Seen through the trees, the house was tall and steep-roofed. It reached far back on its land, surrounded by close-trimmed lawn and shadowy shrubs. The windows were tall and narrow, some of them closed by louvered shutters. Pale light shone out through the narrow openings of the shutters.
Unable to place the sensation of wrongness, Jim swung the car away from the curb and drove home. He parked his car, and, feeling tired and ready for sleep, walked up the dark drive, climbed the steps to the porch, and fished in his pocket for his keycase. He felt for the right key in the darkness, and moved back onto the steps to get a little more light. It was almost as dark there as on the porch. Puzzled, he glanced up at the sky.
The stars were out, with a heavy mass of clouds in the distance, and a few small clouds sliding by overhead. The edge of one of the small clouds lit up faintly, and as it passed, a pale crescent moon hung in the sky. Jim looked around. Save for the light in the windows, the houses all bulked dark.
Jim went down the steps to his car and drove swiftly back along Jayne Street. He turned, drove a short distance up the side street, and parked.
This time, the outside of the huge house was dark. Bright light shone out the shutters onto the lawn and shrubbery. But the house was a dark bulk against the sky. Jim swung the car out from the curb and drove home slowly.
The next morning, he went to Walters' office and studied the model that sat on the table near the desk. The model, painstakingly constructed from enlarged photographs, showed nothing that looked like a camouflaged arrangement for softly floodlighting the walls of the house and the grounds. Jim studied the location of the trees, looked at the house from a number of angles, noticed the broken slats in different shutters on the fourth floor of the tower, but saw nothing else he hadn't seen before.
He called up Walters, who was home having breakfast, and without mentioning details asked, "Is this model on your table complete?"
Walters' voice said, "It's complete up to three o'clock the day before yesterday. We check it regularly."
Jim thanked him and hung up, unsatisfied. He knelt down and put his eye in the position of a man in the street in front of the house. He noticed that certain parts of the trees were blocked off from view by the mansion. Some of these parts could be photographed from a light plane flying overhead, but other portions would be hidden by foliage. Jim told himself that floodlights must be hidden high in the trees, in such a way that they could simulate moonlight.
In that case, the question was—why?
Jim studied the model. He was bothered by much the same sensation as that of a man examining the random parts of a jigsaw puzzle. The first few pieces fitted together, the shapes and colors matched, but they didn't seem to add up to anything he had ever seen before.
As he drove out to the house, the day was cool and clear. The house itself, by daylight, seemed to combine grace, size, and a sort of starched aloofness. It was painted a pale lavender, with a very dark, steeply slanting roof. Tall arching trees rose above it, shading parts of the roof, the grounds, and the shrubs. The lawn was closely trimmed, and bordered by a low spike-topped black-iron fence.
Jim pulled in to the curb in front of the house, got out, opened a low wrought-iron gate in the fence, and started up the walk. He glanced up at the trees, saw nothing of floodlights, then looked at the house.
The house had a gracious, neat, well-groomed appearance. All the window-panes shone, all the shades were even, all the curtains neatly hung, all the trim bright and the shutters straight. Jim, close to the house, raised his eyes to the tower. All the shutters there were perfect and even and straight.
The sense of wrongness that had bothered him the day before was back again. He paused in his stride, frowning.
The front door opened and a plump, gray-haired woman in a light-blue maid's uniform stood in the doorway. With her left hand, she smoothed her white apron.
"My," she said, smiling, "isn't it a nice day?" She stepped back and with her left hand opened the door wider. "Come in." Her right hand remained at her side, half-hidden by the ruffles of her apron.
Jim's mouth felt dry. "May I," he said, "speak to Miss Cynthia?"
"Of course you may," said the woman. She shut the door behind him.
They were in a small vestibule opening into a high-ceilinged hallway. Down the hall, Jim could see an open staircase to the second floor, and several wide doorways with heavy dark draperies.
"Go straight ahead and up the stairs," said the woman in a pleasant voice. "Turn left at the head of the stairs. Miss Cynthia is in the second room on the right."
Jim took one step. There was a sudden sharp pressure on his skull, a flash of white light, and a piercing pain and a pressure in his right arm—a sensation like that of an injection. Then there was nothing but blackness.
Gradually he became aware that he was lying on a bed, with a single cover over him. He opened his eyes to see that he was in an airy room with a light drapery blowing in at the window. He started to sit up and his head throbbed. The walls of the room leaned out and came back. For an instant, he saw the room like a photographic negative, the white woodwork black and the dark furniture nearly white. He lay carefully back on the pillow and the room returned to normal.
He heard the quick tap of high heels in the hallway and a door opened beside him. He turned his head. The room seemed to spin in circles around him. He shut his eyes.
When he opened his eyes again, a tall, dark-haired woman was watching him with a faint hint of a smile. "How do you feel?"
"Not good," said Jim.
"It's too bad we have to do it this way, but some people lose their nerve. Others come with the thought that we have a profitable business and they would like to have a part of it. We have to bring these people around to our way of thinking."
"What's your way of thinking?"
She looked at him seriously. "What we have to offer is worth far more than any ordinary pattern of life. We can't let it fall into the wrong hands."
"What is it that you have to offer?"
She smiled again. "I can't tell you as well as you can experience it."
"That may be. But a man going into a strange country likes to have a road map."
"That's very nicely put," she said, "but you won't be going into any strange country. What we offer you is nothing but your reasonable desires in life."
"Is that all?"
"It's enough."
"Is there any danger of addiction?"
"After you taste steak, is there any danger of your wanting more? After you hold perfect beauty in your arms, is there any danger you might want to do so again? The superior is always addicting."
He looked at her for a moment. "And how about my affairs? Will they suffer?"
"That depends on you."
"What if I go from here straight to the police station?"
"You won't. Once we are betrayed, you can never come back. We won't be here. You wouldn't want that."
"Do you give me anything to take out? Can I buy—"
"No," she said. "You can't take anything out but your memories. You'll find they will be enough."
As she said this, Jim had a clear mental picture of the girl sitting on the cot in the hospital, staring at the floor. He felt a sudden intense desire to get out. He started to sit up, and the room darkened and spun around him.
He felt the woman's cool hands ease him back into place.
"Now," she said, "do you have any more questions?"
"No," said Jim.
"Then," she said briskly, "we can get down to business. The charge for your first series of three visits is one thousand dollars per visit."
"What about the next visits?"
"Must we discuss that now?"
"I'd like to know."
"The charge for each succeeding series of three is doubled."
"How often do I come back?"
"We don't allow anyone to return oftener than once every two weeks. That is for your own protection."
Jim did a little mental arithmetic, and estimated that by the middle of the year a man would have to pay sixteen thousand dollars a visit, and by the end of the year it would be costing him a quarter of a million each time he came to the place.
"Why," he asked, "does the cost increase?"
"Because, I've been told to tell those who ask, your body acquires a tolerance and we have to overcome it. If we have to use twice as much of the active ingredient in our treatment, it seems fair for us to charge twice as much."
"I see." Jim cautiously eased himself up a little. "And suppose that I decide right now not to pay anything at all."
She shook her head impatiently. "You're on a one-way street. The only way you can go is forward."
"That remains to be seen."
"Then you'll see."
She stepped to a dresser against the wall, picked up an atomizer, turned the little silver nozzle toward him, squeezed the white rubber bulb, and set the atomizer back on the dresser. She opened the door and went out. Jim felt a mist of fine droplets falling on his face. He tried to inhale very gently to see if it had an odor. His muscles wouldn't respond.
He lay very still for a moment and felt the droplets falling one by one. They seemed to explode and tingle as they touched his skin. He lay still a moment more, braced himself to make one lunge out of the bed, then tried it.
He lay flat on his back on the bed. A droplet tingled and exploded on his cheek.
He was beginning to feel a strong need for breath.
He braced himself once more, simply to move sidewise off the pillow. Once there, he could get further aside in stages, out of the range of the droplets. He kept thinking, "Just a moment now—steady—just a moment—just—Now!"
And nothing happened.
He lay flat on his back on the bed. A droplet tingled and exploded on his cheek.
The need for air was becoming unbearable. Jim's head was throbbing and the room went dark with many tiny spots of light. He tried to suck in air and he couldn't. He tried to breathe out, but his chest and lungs didn't move. He could hear the pound of his heart growing fast and loud.
He couldn't move.
At the window, the light drapery fluttered and blew in and fell back.
He lay flat on the bed and felt a droplet tingle and explode on his cheek.
His skull was throbbing. His heart writhed and hammered in his chest. The room was going dark.
Then something gave way and his lungs were dragging in painful gasps of fresh air. He sobbed like a runner at the end of a race. After a long time, a feeling of peace and tiredness came over him.
The door opened.
He looked up. The woman was watching him sadly. "I'm sorry," she said. "Do you want to discuss payment?"
Jim nodded.
The woman sat down in a chair by the bed. "As I've explained, the initial series of three visits costs one thousand dollars each. We will accept a personal check or even an I. O. U. for the first payment. After that, you must have cash."
Jim made out a check for one thousand dollars.
The woman nodded, smiled, and folded the check into a small purse. She went out, came back with a glass of colorless liquid, shook a white powder into it, and handed it to him.
"Drink it all," she said. "A little bit can be excruciatingly painful."
Jim hesitated. He sat up a little and began to feel dizzy. He decided he had better do as she said, took the glass and drained it. It tasted exactly like sodium bicarbonate dissolved in water. He handed her the glass and she went to the door.
"The first experiences," she said, "are likely to be a little exuberant. Remember, your time sense will be distorted, as it is in a dream." She went out and shut the door softly.
Jim fervently wished he were somewhere else. He wondered what she meant by the last comment. The thought came to him that if he could get out of this place, he could give Walters and the doctors a chance to see the drug in action.
He got up, and had the momentary sensation of doing two things at once. He seemed to lie motionless on the bed and to stand up at one and the same time. He wondered if the drug could have taken effect already. He lay down and got up again. This time he felt only a little dizzy. He went to the window and looked out. He was in a second-story window, and the first-floor rooms in this house had high ceilings. Moreover, he now discovered he was wearing a sort of hospital gown. He couldn't go into the street in that without causing a sensation, and he didn't know just when the drug would take effect.
He heard the soft click of the door opening and turned around. The woman who had talked to him came in and closed the door gently behind her. Jim watched in a daze as she turned languorously, and it occurred to him that no woman he had ever seen had moved quite like that, so the chances were that the drug had taken effect and he was imagining all this. He remembered that she had said the first experiences were likely to be a little exuberant, and his time sense distorted as in a dream.
Jim spent the night, if it was the night, uncertain as to what was real and what was due to the drug. But it was all vivid, and realistic events shaded into adventures he knew were imaginary, but that were so bright and satisfying that he didn't care if they were real or not. In these adventures, the colors were pure colors, and the sounds were clear sounds, and nothing was muddied or uncertain as in life.
It was so vivid and clear that when he found himself lying on the bed with the morning sun streaming in, he was astonished that he could remember not a single incident save the first, and that one not clearly.
He got up and found his clothes lying on a chair by the bed. He dressed rapidly, glanced around for the little atomizer and saw it was gone. He stepped out into the hall and there was a sudden sharp pressure on his skull, a flash of white light, and a feeling of limpness. He felt strong hands grip and carry him. He felt himself hurried down a flight of steps, along a corridor, then set down with his back against a wall.
When he felt strong enough to, he opened his eyes.
The plump, gray-haired woman took a damp cloth and held it to his head. "You'll be all over that in a little while," she said. "I don't see why they have to do that."
"Neither do I," said Jim. He felt reasonably certain that she had done the same thing to him when he came in. He looked around, saw that they were in a small bare entry, and got cautiously to his feet. "Is my car still out front?"
"No," she said. "It's parked in back, in the drive."
"Thank you," he said. "Say good-by to Miss Cynthia for me."
The woman smiled. "You'll be back."
He was very much relieved to get outside the house. He walked back along the wide graveled drive, found his car, got in, and started it. When he reached the front of the house, he slowed the car to glance back. To his surprise, the two shutters on the third floor of the tower had broken slats. He thought this had some significance, but he was unable to remember what it was. He sat for a moment, puzzled, then decided that the important thing was to get to Walters. He swung the car out into the early morning traffic, and settled back with a feeling compounded of nine parts relief and one part puzzlement.
What puzzled him was that anyone should pay one thousand dollars for a second dose of that.
The doctors made a lightning examination, announced that he seemed physically sound, and then Walters questioned him. He described the experience in close detail, and Walters listened, nodding from time to time. At the end, Jim said, "I'll be damned if I can see why anyone should go back!"
"That is puzzling," said Walters. "It may be that they were all sensation-seekers, though that's a little odd, too. Whatever the reason, it's lucky you weren't affected."
"Maybe I'd better keep my fingers crossed," said Jim.
Walters laughed. "I'll bring your bankbook in to keep you happy." He went out, and a moment later the doctors were in again. It wasn't until the next morning that they were willing to let him go. Just as he was about to leave, one of them remarked to him, "I hope you never need a blood transfusion in a hurry."
"Why so?" Jim asked.
"You have one of the rarest combinations I've ever seen." He held out an envelope. "Walters said to give you this."
Jim opened it. It was a duplicate deposit slip for a sum as high as five figures could go.
Jim went out to a day that wasn't sunny, but looked just as good to him as if it had been.
After careful thought, Jim decided to use the money to open a detective agency of his own. Walters, who caught the dope gang trying to escape through an unused steam tunnel, gave Jim his blessing, and the offer of a job if things went wrong.
Fortunately, things went very well. Jim's agency prospered. In time, he found the right girl, they married, and had two boys and a girl. The older boy became a doctor, and the girl married a likable fast-rising young lawyer. The younger boy had a series of unpleasant scrapes and seemed bound on wrecking his life. Jim, who was by this time very well to do, at last offered the boy a job in his agency, and was astonished to see him take hold.
The years fled past much faster than Jim would have liked. Still, when the end came near, he had the pleasure of knowing that his life's work would be in the capable hands of his own son.
He breathed his last breath in satisfaction.
And woke up lying on a bed in a room where a light drapery blew back at the window and the morning sun shone in, and his clothes were folded on a chair by his bed.
Jim sat up very carefully. He held his hand in front of his face and turned it over slowly. It was not the hand of an old man. He got up and looked in a mirror, then sat down on the edge of the bed. He was young, all right. The question was, was this an old man's nightmare, or was the happy life he had just lived a dope addict's dream?
He remembered the woman who had doped him saying, "What we offer you is nothing but your reasonable desires in life."
Then it had all been a dream.
But a dream should go away, and this remained clear in his memory.
He dressed, went out in the hall, felt a sudden pressure on his skull, a flash of white light, and a feeling of limpness.
He came to in the small entry, and the plump, gray-haired woman carefully held a damp cool cloth to his head.
"Thanks," he said. "Is my car out back?"
"Yes," she said, and he went out.
As he drove away from the house he glanced back and noticed the two broken shutters on the third floor of the tower. The memory of his dream about this same event—leaving the place—jarred him. It seemed that those broken shutters meant something, but he was unable to remember what. He trod viciously on the gas pedal, throwing a spray of gravel on the carefully tailored lawn as he swung into the street.
He still did not see why anyone should go back there with anything less than a shotgun.
He told Walters the whole story, including the details of his "life," that he remembered so clearly.
"You'll get over it," Walters finally said, when Jim was ready to leave the hospital. "It's a devil of a thing to have happen, but there's an achievement in it you can be proud of."
"You name it," said Jim bitterly.
"You've saved a lot of other people from this same thing. The doctors have analyzed the traces of drug still in your blood. They think they can neutralize it. Then we are going to put a few sturdy men inside that house, and while they're assumed to be under the influence, we'll raid the place."
The tactic worked, but Jim watched the trial with a cynical eye. He couldn't convince himself that it was true. He might, for all he knew, be lying in a second-floor room of the house on a bed, while these people, who seemed to be on trial, actually were going freely about their business.
This inability to accept what he saw as real at last forced Jim to resign his job. Using the generous bonus Walters had given him, he took up painting. As he told Walters on one of his rare visits, "It may or may not be that what I'm doing is real, but at least there's the satisfaction of the work itself."
"You're not losing any money on it," said Walter shrewdly.
"I know," said Jim, "and that makes me acutely uneasy."
On his 82nd birthday, Jim was widely regarded as the "Grand Old Man" of painting. His hands and feet felt cold that day, and he fell into an uneasy, shallow-breathing doze. He woke with a start and a choking cough. For an instant everything around him had an unnatural clarity; then it all went dark and he felt himself falling.
He awoke in a bed in a room where a light drapery fluttered at the window, and the morning sun shone into the room.
This time, Jim entertained no doubts as to whether or not this was real. He got up angrily and smashed his fist into the wall with all his might.
The shock and pain jolted him to his heels.
He went out the same way as before, but he had to drive one-handed, gritting his teeth all the way.
The worst of it was that the doctors weren't able to make that hand exactly right afterward. Even if the last "life" had been a dream—even if this one was—he wanted to paint. But every time he tried to, he felt so clumsy that he gave up in despair.
Walters, dissatisfied, gave Jim the minimum possible payment. The gang escaped. Jim eventually lost his job, and in the end he eked out his life at poorly paid odd jobs.
The only consolation he felt was that his life was so miserable that it must be true.
He went to bed sick one night and woke up the next morning on a bed in a room where a light drapery fluttered at the window and the early morning sun shone brightly in.
This happened to him twice more.
The next time after that, he lay still on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The incidents and details of five lives danced in his mind like jabbering monkeys. He pressed his palms to his forehead and wished he could forget it all.
The door opened softly and the tall, dark-haired woman was watching him with a faint smile. "I told you," she said, "that you couldn't take anything away but memories."
He looked up at her sickly. "That seems like a long, long while ago."
She nodded and sat down. "Your time sense is distorted as in a dream."
"I wish," he said drearily, looking at her, "that I could just forget it all. I don't see why anyone would come back for more of that."
She leaned forward to grip the edge of the mattress, shaking with laughter. She sat up again. "Whew!" she said, looking at him and forcing her face to be straight. "Nobody comes back for more. That is the unique quality of this drug. People come back to forget they ever had it."
He sat up. "I can forget that?"
"Oh, yes. Don't get so excited! That's what you really paid your thousand dollars for. The forgetfulness drug lingers in your bloodstream for two to three weeks. Then memory returns and you're due for another visit."
Jim looked at her narrowly. "Does my body become tolerant of this drug? Does it take twice as much after three visits, four times as much after six visits, eight times as much after nine visits?"
"No."
"Then you lied to me."
She looked at him oddly. "What would you have expected of me? But I didn't lie to you. I merely said that that was what I was told to tell those who asked."
"Then what's the point of it?" Jim asked.
"What's the point of bank robbery?" She frowned at him. "You ask a lot of questions. Aren't you lucky I know the answers? Ordinarily you wouldn't get around to this till you'd stewed for a few weeks. But you seem precocious, so I'll tell you."
"That's nice," he said.
"The main reason for the impossible rates is so you can't pay off in money."
"How does that help you?"
"Because," she said, "every time you bring us a new patron, you get three free visits yourself."
"Ah," he said.
"It needn't be so terribly unpleasant, coming here."
"What happens if, despite everything, some sorehead actually goes and tells the police about this?"
"We move."
"Suppose they catch you?"
"They won't. Or, at least, it isn't likely."
"But you'll leave?"
"Yes."
"What happens to me?"
"Don't you see? We'll have to leave. Someone will have betrayed us. We couldn't stay because it might happen again. It isn't right from your viewpoint, but we can't take chances."
For a few moments they didn't talk, and the details of Jim's previous "lives" came pouring in on him. He sat up suddenly. "Where's that forgetfulness drug?"
She went outside and came back with a glass of colorless liquid. She poured in a faintly pink powder and handed it to him. He drank it quickly and it tasted like bicarbonate of soda dissolved in water.
He looked at her. "This isn't the same thing all over again, is it?"
"Don't worry," she said. "You'll forget."
The room began to go dark. He leaned back. The last thing he was conscious of was her cool hand on his forehead, then the faint click as she opened the door to go out.
He sat up. He dressed, drove quickly to Walters and told him all he could remember. Walters immediately organized his raid. Jim saw the place closed up with no one caught.
After two weeks and four days, the memories flooded back. His life turned into a nightmare. At every turn, the loves, hates, and tiny details of six separate lives poured in on him. He tried drugs in an attempt to forget, and sank from misery to hopeless despair. He ended up in a shooting scrap as Public Enemy Number Four.
And then he awoke and found himself in a bed in a room with a light drapery blowing in at the window, and the early morning sun shining brightly in.
"Merciful God!" he said.
The door clicked shut.
Jim sprang to the door and looked out in the carpeted hall. There was a flash of a woman's skirt; then a tall narrow door down the hallway closed to shut off his view.
He drew back into the room and shut the door. The house was quiet. In the distance, on the street, he could hear the faint sound of a passing car.
He swallowed hard. He glanced at the window. It had been, he reasoned, early morning when he had talked to the woman last. It was early morning now. He recalled that before she went out she said, "You'll forget." He had then lived his last miserable "life"—and awakened to hear the click as the door came shut behind her.
That had all taken less than five seconds of actual time.
He found his clothes on a nearby chair and started to dress. As he did so, he realized for the first time that the memories of his "lives" were no longer clear to him. They were fading away, almost as the memories of a dream do after a man wakes and gets up. Almost as the memories of a dream, but not quite. Jim found that if he thought of them, they gradually became clear again.
He tried to forget and turned his attention to the tree he could see through the window. He looked at the curve of its boughs, and at a black-and-yellow bird balancing on a branch in the breeze.
The memories faded away, and he began to plan what to do. No sooner did he do this than he remembered with a shock that he had said to Walters, "If I don't come out next morning, I want you to come in after me."
And Walters had said, "We will."
So that must have been just last night.
Jim finished dressing, took a deep breath, and held out his hand. It looked steady. He opened the door, stepped out into the hall, and an instant too late remembered what had happened six times before.
When he opened his eyes, the plump, gray-haired woman was holding a damp cloth to his forehead and clucking sympathetically.
Jim got carefully to his feet, and walked down the drive to his car. He slid into the driver's seat, started the engine, and sat still a moment, thinking. Then he released the parking brake, and pressed lightly on the gas pedal. The car slid smoothly ahead, the gravel of the drive crunching under its tires. He glanced up as the car reached the end of the drive, and looked back at the tower. Every slat in the shutters was perfect. Jim frowned, trying to remember something. Then he glanced up and down the street, and swung out into the light early morning traffic.
He wasted no time getting to Walters.
He was greeted with an all-encompassing inspection that traveled from Jim's head to his feet. Walters looked tense. He took a cigar from a box on his desk and put it in his mouth unlit.
"I've spent half the night telling myself there are some things you can't ask a man to do for money. But we had to do it. Are you all right?"
"At the moment."
"There are doctors and medical technicians in the next room. Do you want to see them now or later?"
"Right now."
In the next hour, Jim took off his clothes, stood up, lay down, looked into bright lights, winced as a sharp hollow needle was forced into his arm, gave up samples of bodily excretions, sat back as electrodes were strapped to his skin, and at last was reassured that he would be all right. He dressed, and found himself back in Walters' office.
Walters looked at him sympathetically.
"How do you feel?"
"Starved."
"I'll have breakfast sent in." He snapped on his intercom, gave the order, then leaned back. He picked up his still unlit cigar, lit it, puffed hard, and said, "What happened?"
Jim told him, starting with the evening before, and ending when he swung his car out into traffic this morning.
Walters listened with a gathering frown, drawing occasionally on the cigar.
A breakfast of scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon was brought in. Walters got up, and looked out the window, staring down absently at the traffic moving past in the street below. Jim ate with single-minded concentration, and finally pushed his plate back and looked up.
Walters ground his cigar butt in the ashtray and lit a fresh cigar. "This is a serious business. You say you remembered the details of each of those six lives clearly?"
"Worse than that. I remembered the emotions and the attachments. In the first life, for instance, I had my own business." Jim paused and thought back. The memories gradually became clear again. "One of my men, for instance, was named Hart. He stood about five-seven, slender, with black hair, cut short when I first met him. Hart was a born actor. He could play any part. It wasn't his face. His expression hardly seemed to change. But his manner changed. He could stride into a hotel and the bellboys would jump for his bags and the desk clerk spring to attention. He stood out. He was important. Or he could slouch in the front door, hesitate, look around, blink, start to ask one of the bellboys something, lose his nerve, stiffen his shoulders, shamble over to the desk, and get unmercifully snubbed. Obviously, he was less than nobody. Or, again, he could quietly come in the front door, stroll across the lobby, fade out of sight somewhere, and hardly a person would notice or remember him. Whatever part he played, he lived it. That was what made him so valuable."
Walters had taken the cigar out of his mouth, and listened intently. "You mean this Hart—this imaginary man—is real to you? In three dimensions?"
"That's it. Not only that, I like him. There were other, stronger attachments. I had a family."
"Which seems real?"
Jim nodded. "I realize as I say these things that I sound like a lunatic."
"No." Walters shook his head sympathetically. "It all begins to make sense. Now I see why the girl at the hospital said to the doctor, 'You aren't real.' Does it hurt to talk about these 'lives'?"
Jim hesitated. "Not as long as we keep away from the personal details. But it hurt like nothing I can describe to have all six of these sets of memories running around in my head at once."
"I can imagine. All right, let's track down some of these memories and see how far the details go."
Jim nodded. "Okay."
Walters got out a bound notebook and pen. "We'll start with your business. What firm name did you use?"
"Calder Associates."
"Why?"
"It sounded dignified, looked good on a business card or letterhead, and wasn't specific."
"What was your address?"
"Four North Street. Earlier, it was 126 Main."
"How many men did you have working with you?"
"To begin with, just Hart, and another man by the name of Dean. At the end, there were twenty-seven."
"What were their names?"
Jim called them off one by one, without hesitation.
Walters blinked. "Say that over again a little more slowly."
Jim repeated the list.
"All right," said Walters. "Describe these men."
Jim described them. He gave more and more details as Walters pressed for them, and by lunch time, Walters had a large section of the notebook filled.
The two men ate, and Walters spent the rest of the afternoon quizzing Jim on his first "life." Then they had steak and French fries sent up to the office. Walters ate in silence for a moment, then said, "Do you realize that you haven't stumbled once?"
Jim looked up in surprise. "What do you mean?"
Walters said, "Quiz me on the names of every man who ever worked for me. I won't remember all of them. Not by a long shot. You remember every last detail of this dream life with a total recall that beats anything I've ever seen."
"That's the trouble. That's why it's pleasant to forget."
Walters asked suddenly, "Did you ever paint? Actually, I mean. I ask you because you say you were an outstanding painter in one of these 'lives.'"
"When I was a boy, I painted some. I wanted to be an artist."
"Can you come out to my place tonight? I'd like to see whether you can really handle the brushes."
Jim nodded. "Yes, I'd like to try that."
They drove out together, and Walters got out a dusty paint set in a wooden case, set up a folding easel, and put a large canvas on it.
Jim stood still a moment, thinking back. Then he began to paint. He lost himself in the work, as he always had, all through the years, and what he was painting now he had painted before. Had painted it, and sold it for a good price, too. And it was worth it. He could still see the model in his mind as he painted with swift precise strokes.
He stepped back.
"My Lady in Blue" was a cheerful girl of seventeen. She smiled out from the canvas as if at any moment she might laugh or wave.
Jim glanced around. For an instant the room seemed strange. Then he remembered where he was.
Walters looked at the painting for a long moment, then looked at Jim, and swallowed. He carefully took the painting from the easel and replaced it with another blank canvas. He went across the room and got a large floor-type ashtray, a wrought-iron affair with a galloping horse for the handle.
"Paint this."
Jim looked at it. He stepped up to the canvas, hesitated. He raised the brush—and stopped. He didn't know where to begin. He frowned and carefully thought back to his first lessons. "Let's see." He glanced up. "Do you have any tracing paper?"
"Just a minute," said Walters.
Jim tacked the paper over the canvas and methodically drew the ashtray on the paper. He had a hard time, but at last looked at the paper triumphantly. "Now, do you have any transfer paper?"
Walters frowned. "I've got carbon paper."
"All right."
Walters got it. Jim put a sheet under his tracing paper, tacked it up again, and carefully went over the drawing with a pencil. He untacked the paper, then methodically began to paint. At length, weary and perspiring, he stepped back.
Walters looked at it. Jim blinked and looked again. Walters said, "A trifle off-center, isn't it?"
There was no doubt about it, the ashtray stood too far toward the upper right-hand corner of the canvas.
Walters pointed at the other painting. "Over there we have a masterpiece that you dashed off freehand. Here we have, so to speak, a piece of good, sound mechanical drawing that isn't properly placed on the canvas. This took you longer to do than the other. How come?"
"I had done the other before."
"And you remember the motions of your hand? Is that it?" He put another canvas up. "Do it again."
Jim frowned. He stepped forward, thought a moment, and began to paint. He lost himself in a perfection of concentration. In time, he stepped back.
Walters looked at it. He swallowed hard, glanced back and forth from this painting to the one Jim had done at first. He lifted the painting carefully from the easel and placed it beside the other.
They looked identical.
The sun was just lighting the horizon as they drove back to the office. Walters said, "I'm going in there and sleep on the cot. Can you get back around three this afternoon?"
"Sure."
Jim drove home, slept, ate, and was back again by three.
"This is a devil of a puzzle," said Walters, leaning back at his desk and blowing out a cloud of smoke. "I've had half a dozen experts squint at one of those paintings. I've been offered five thousand, even though they didn't know the artist's name. Then I showed them the other painting and they almost fell through the floor. It isn't possible, but each stroke appears identical. How do you feel?"
"Better. And I've remembered something. Let's look at your model."
They went to the big model of the mansion, and Jim touched the upper story of the tower. "Have some of the boys sketch this. Then compare the sketches with photographs."
Soon they were looking at sketches and photographs side by side. The sketches showed the tower shutters perfect. The photographs showed several slats of the shutters broken.
Walters questioned the men, who insisted the shutters were perfect. After they left, Jim said, "Everyone who sketched that place wasn't drugged. And the cameras certainly weren't drugged."
Walters said, "Let's take a look." They drove out past the mansion, and the shutters looked perfect. A new photograph showed the same broken slats.
Back at the office, Walters said, "Just what are we up against here?"
Jim said, "I can think of two possibilities."
"Let's hear them."
"Often you can do the same thing several different ways. A man, for instance, can go from one coastal town to another on foot, riding a horse, by car, by plane, or in a speedboat."
"Granted."
"A hundred years ago, the list would have been shorter."
Walters nodded thoughtfully. "I follow you. Go on."
"Whoever sees those shutters as perfect is, for the time being, in an abnormal mental state. How did he get there? We've assumed drugs were used. But just as there are new ways of going from one city to another, so there may be new ways of passing from one mental state to another. Take subliminal advertising, for instance, where the words, 'THIRSTY,' 'THIRSTY,' 'BEER,' may be flashed on the screen too fast to be consciously seen."
"It's illegal."
"Suppose someone found out how to do it undetected, and decided to try it out on a small scale. What about nearly imperceptible verbal clues instead of visual ones?"
Walters' eyes narrowed. "We'll analyze every sound coming out of that place and check for any kind of suspicious sensory stimulus whatever. What's your other idea?"
"Well, go back to your travel analogy. Going from one place to another, any number of animals could outrun, outfly, outswim a man. Let Man work on the problem long enough, and roll up to the starting line in his rocket-plane, and the result will be different. But until Man has time to concentrate enough thought and effort, the nonhuman creature has an excellent chance to beat him. There are better fliers, better swimmers, better fighters, better—"
Walters frowned. "Better suggestionists?" Like the snake that's said to weave hypnotically?"
"Yes, and the wasp that stings the trapdoor spider, when other wasps are fought off."
"Hmm. Maybe. But I incline to the subliminal advertising theory myself." He looked at the mansion. "Where would they keep the device?"
"Why not the tower?"
Walters nodded. "It's an easy place to guard, and to shut off from visitors."
Jim said, "It might explain those shutters. They might not care to risk painters and repairmen up there."
Walters knocked the ash off his cigar. "But how do we get in there to find out?"
They studied the model. Walters said, "Say we send in a 'building inspector.' They'll merely knock him out, hallucinate a complete series of incidents in his mind, and send him out totally ignorant. If we try to raid the place in a group, they'll vanish with the help of that machine. But there must be some way."
Jim said thoughtfully, "Those trees overhang the room."
"They do, don't they?"
The two men studied the trees and the tower.
Jim touched one of the arching limbs. "What if we lowered a rope from here?"
Walters tied an eraser on a string and fastened the string to a limb. The eraser hung by the uppermost tower window. Walters scowled, snapped on the intercom, and asked for several of his men. Then he turned to Jim. "We'll see what Cullen thinks. He's done some jobs like this."
Cullen had sharp eyes and a mobile face that grew unhappy as he listened to Walters. Finally, he shook his head. "No, thanks. Ask me to go up a wall, or the side of a building. But not down out of a tree branch on the end of a rope."
He gave the eraser a little flip with his finger. It swung in circles, hit the wall, and bounced away.
"Say I'm actually up there. It's night. The rope swings. The limb bobs up and down. The tree sways. All to a different rhythm. I'm spinning around on the end of this rope. One second this shutter is one side of me. The next second it's on the other side and five feet away. A job is a job, but this is one I don't want."
Walters turned to Jim after Cullen went out. "That settles that."
Jim looked at the tree limb. Two or three weeks from today, he told himself, the memories would come flooding back. The people who had done it would get away, and do it again. And he would have those memories.
Jim glanced at Walters stubbornly. "I am going to climb that tree."
The night was still, with a dark overcast sky as Jim felt the rough bark against the insides of his arms. He hitched up the belt that circled the tree, then pulled up one foot, then another as he sank the climbing irons in higher up. He could hear Cullen's advice: "Practice, study the model, do each step over and over in your head. Then, when you're actually doing it and when things get tight, hold your mind on what to do next. Do that. Then think of the next step."
Jim was doing this as the dark lawn dropped steadily away. He felt the tree trunk grow gradually more slender, then begin to widen. He worked his way carefully above the limb, refastened the belt, and felt a puff of warm air touch his face and neck, like a leftover from the warm day. Somewhere, a radio was playing.
He climbed, aware now of the rustling around him of leaves.
The trunk widened again, and he knew he was at the place where the trunk separated into the limbs that arched out to form the crown of the tree.
He pulled himself up carefully, and took his eyes from the tree for a moment to look toward the mansion. He saw the slanting tile roof of an entirely different house, light shining down from a dormer window. He glanced around, to see the looming steep-roofed tower of the mansion in the opposite direction. He realized he must have partially circled the tree and lost his sense of direction.
He swallowed and crouched in the cleft between the limbs till he was sure he knew which limb arched over the tower. He fastened the belt and started slowly up.
As he climbed, the limb arched, to become more and more nearly horizontal. At the same time, the limb became more slender. It began to respond to his movements, swaying slightly as he climbed. Now he was balancing on it, the steep roof of the tower shining faintly ahead of him. He remembered that he had to take off the climbing irons, lest they foul in the rope later on. As he twisted to do this, his hands trembled. He forced his breath to come steadily. He looked ahead to the steep, slanting roof of the tower.
The limb was already almost level. If he crawled further, it would sag under him. He would be climbing head down. He glanced back, and his heart began to pound. To go back, he would have to inch backwards along the narrow limb.
Cullen's words came to him: "When things get tight, hold your mind on what to do next. Do that. Then think of the next step."
He inched ahead. The limb began to sag.
There was a rustling of leaves.
The limb swayed. It fell, and rose, beneath him.
He clung to it, breathing hard.
He inched further. The leaves rustled. The limb pressed up, then fell away. He shut his eyes, his forehead tight against the bark, and crept ahead. After a time, he seemed to feel himself tip to one side. His eyes opened.
The tower was almost beneath him.
With his left arm, he clung tightly to the limb. With his right, he felt carefully for the rope tied to his belt. He worked one end of the rope forward and carefully looped it around the limb. He tied the knot that he had practiced over and over, then tested it, and felt it hold.
A breeze stirred the leaves. The limb began to sway.
The dark lawn below seemed to reach up and he felt himself already falling. He clung hard to the limb and felt his body tremble all over. Then he knew he had to go through the rest of his plan without hesitation, lest he lose his nerve completely.
He sucked in a deep breath, swung over the limb, let go with one hand, caught the rope, then caught it with the other hand, looped the rope around one ankle, and started to slide down.
The rope swung. The limb dipped, then lifted. The tree seemed to sway slightly.
Jim clung, his left foot clamping the loop of the rope passed over his right ankle. The swaying, dipping, and whirling began to die down. His hands felt weak and tired.
He slid gradually down the rope. Then the shutter was right beside him. He reached out, put his hand through the break in the slats, and lifted the iron catch. The hinges of the shutters screeched as he pulled them open.
A dead black oblong hung before him.
He reached out, and felt no sash in the opening. He climbed higher on the rope, pushed away from the building, and as he swung back, stepped across, caught the frame, and dropped inside.
The shutters screeched as he pulled them shut, but the house remained quiet. He stood still for a long moment, then unsnapped a case on his belt, and took out a little polarizing flashlight. He carefully thumbed the stud that turned the front lens. A dim beam faintly lit the room.
There was a glint of metal, then another. Shiny parallel lines ran from the ceiling to floor in front of him. There was an odd faint odor.
The house was quiet. A shift of the wind brought the distant sound of recorded music.
Carefully, Jim eased the stud of the flashlight further around, so the light grew a trifle brighter.
The vertical lines looked like bars.
He stepped forward and peered into the darkness.
Behind the bars, something stirred.
Jim reached back, unbuttoned the flap of his hip pocket and gripped the cool metal of his gun.
Something moved behind the bars. It reached out, bunched itself, reached out. Something large and dark slid up the bars.
Jim raised the gun.
A hissing voice said quietly, "You are from some sort of law-enforcement agency? Good."
Jim slid his thumb toward the stud of the light, so he could see more clearly. But the faint hissing voice went on, "Don't. It will do no good to see me."
Jim's hand tightened on the gun at the same instant that his mind asked a question.
The voice said, "Who am I? Why am I here? If I tell you, it will strain your mind to believe me. Let me show you."
The room seemed to pivot, then swung around him faster and faster. A voice spoke to him from all sides; then something lifted him up, and at an angle.
He stared at the dial, rapped it with his finger. The needle didn't move from its pin. He glanced at the blue-green planet on the screen. Photon pressure was zero, and there was nothing to do but try to land on chemical rockets. As he strapped himself into the acceleration chair, he began to really appreciate the size of his bad luck.
Any solo space pilot, he told himself, should be a good mechanic. And an individual planetary explorer should be his own pilot, to save funds. Moreover, anyone planning to explore Ludt VI, with its high gravity and pressure, and its terrific psychic stress, should be strong and healthy.
These requirements made Ludt VI almost the exclusive preserve of big organizations with teams of specialists. They sent out heavily equipped expeditions, caught a reasonable quota of spat, trained them on the way home, and sold the hideous creatures at magnificent prices to the proprietors of every dream parlor in the system. From this huge income, they paid their slightly less huge costs, and made a safe moderate profit on their investment. With a small expedition, it was different.
A small expedition faced risk, and a one-man expedition was riskiest of all. But if it succeeded, the trained spat brought the same huge price, and there were no big-ship bills for fuel, specialists, power equipment, and insurance. This, he thought, had almost been a successful trip. There were three nearly trained spat back in his sleeping compartment.
But, though he was a competent trainer, a skilled explorer, a passable pilot, and in good physical condition, he was no mechanic. He didn't know how to fix what had gone wrong.
He sat back and watched the rim of the world below swing up in the deep blue sky.
There was a gray fuzziness.
Jim was standing in the dark, seeing the bars shining faintly before him.
The black knot still clung to the bars.
Somewhere in the old mansion, a phone began to ring.
Jim said, in a low voice, "You were the pilot?"
"No. I was the spat. The others died in the crash. Some of your race found me and we made a—an agreement. But it has worked out differently here than I expected. The experiences I stimulate in your minds are enjoyable to you and to me. Yet either the structure of your brains is different from that of the pilot, or you lack training in mind control. You cannot wipe away these experiences afterward, and though I can do it for you easily, it is only temporary."
A door opened and shut downstairs. There was a sound of feet on the staircase.
The hissing began again. "You must go and bring help."
Jim thought of the rope and the trees. His hand tightened on the gun and he made no move toward the window.
The hissing sound said, "I see your difficulty. I will help you."
There was the crack of a rifle, then several shots outside. Jim swung the shutter open, felt a faint dizziness, and looked down on a warm sunlit lawn some three feet below.
A hissing voice said, "Take hold the rope. Now carefully step out. Loop the rope with your foot."
Somewhere in Jim's mind, as he did this, there was an uneasiness. He wondered at it as he climbed up the rope to the bar overhead, swung up onto the bar, slipped and nearly lost his grip. He could see the bar was steady and solid, and he wondered as it seemed to move under him. The green lawn was such a short distance down that there clearly was little danger, and he wondered why his breath came fast as he swung around on the bar, slid down to a sort of resting place where he put on climbing irons before starting down again. Always on the way down, the whistling voice told him that it was just a few feet more, just a few feet, as bit by bit he made his way down, and suddenly heard shots, shouts, and a repeated scream.
Jim stepped off onto the soft lawn, stumbled, and knelt to take off the climbing irons. His heart pounded like a trip-hammer. He realized there was a blaze of spotlights around him. He saw lights coming on in the mansion, and memory returned in a rush. He drew in a deep shaky breath, glanced at the tree, then saw a little knot of people near the base of the tower. He walked over, recognized Walters in the glow of the lights and saw a still figure on the ground.
Walters said, "I shouldn't have let him try it. Cover his face, Cullen."
Cullen bent to draw a coat up over the head of the motionless figure, which was twisted sidewise.
Jim looked down.
He saw his own face.
He was aware of darkness and of something hard beneath him. Voices came muffled from somewhere nearby. He heard the sound of a phone set in its cradle, the slam of a door, the scrape of glass on glass. He breathed and recognized a choking smell of cigar smoke.
Jim sat up.
Nearby was the model of the mansion. Jim swung carefully to his feet, made his way across the room, and opened the door to the next office. He blinked in the bright light, then saw Walters look up and grin. "One more night like this and I retire. How do you feel?"
"I ache all over and I'm dizzy. How did I get here?"
"I was afraid your going in there might misfire and touch off their escape, so I had the place surrounded. We saw you go in, there was about a five-minute pause, and the shutters seemed to come open. A figure came out. Then there was the crack of a rifle from the dormer window of a house across the street. I sent some men into that house, and the rest of us closed in on the mansion. We used the spotlights on our cars to light the place. We'd just found what we thought was your body—with a broken neck—when there was a thud behind us. There you were, and the other body was gone.
"Right then, I thought it was going to be the same as usual. But this time we nailed several men and women in quite a state of confusion. Some of them have fingerprints that match those from the first place we raided. We don't have the equipment yet, because that tower staircase was boarded up tight ... What's wrong?"
Jim told his own version, adding, "Since that shot came before I opened the shutters, the 'figure' you saw go up the rope must have been an illusion, to fool whoever had the gun across the street. And since I heard someone running up the stairs a few minutes before you came in, I don't see how the stairs can be boarded up."
Walters sat up straight. "Another illusion!"
Jim said, "It would be nice to know if there's any limit to those illusions."
Walters said, "This afternoon, we tried looking at those shutters through field glasses. Beyond about four hundred feet, you could see the broken slats. So there's a limit. But if there's no equipment, this is uncanny, 'spat' or no 'spat.'"
Jim shook his head. "I don't know. You can use the same electromagnetic laws and similar components to make all kinds of devices—radios, television sets, electronic computers. What you make depends mainly on how you put the parts together. It may be that in the different conditions on some other planet, types of nerve components similar to those we use for thought might be used to create dangerous illusions in the minds of other creatures."
"That still leaves us with a problem. What do we do with this thing?"
"I got the impression it was like a merchant who has to sell his wares to live. Let me go back and see if we can make an agreement with it."
"I'll go with you."
Jim shook his head. "One of us has to stay beyond that four-hundred-foot limit."
The stairs were narrow leading up into the tower. Jim found weary men amidst plaster and bits of board at a solid barricade on the staircase. He scowled at it, then shouted up the stairs, "I want to talk to you!"
There was a sort of twist in the fabric of things. Jim found himself staring at the wall beside the stairs, its plaster gone and bits of board torn loose. The staircase itself was open. He started up.
Behind him, a man still staring at the wall said, "Did you see that? He went around it somehow."
The back of Jim's neck prickled. He reached a tall door, opened it, turned, and he was standing where he had been before.
There was a faint hissing. "I am glad you came back. I can't keep this up forever."
"We want to make an agreement with you. Otherwise, we'll have to use force."
"There is no need of that. I ask only food, water, and a chance to use my faculties. And I would be very happy if the atmospheric pressure around me could be increased. Falling pressure tires me so that it is hard for me to keep self-control."
Jim thought of the first night, when there had been the appearance of light on mansion and grounds, but heavy clouds and only a thin moon in the sky.
The hissing voice said, "It had stormed, with a sharp fall in atmospheric pressure. I was exhausted and created a wrong illusion. Can you provide what I need?"
"The food, water, and pressure chamber, yes. I don't know about the opportunity to 'use your faculties.'"
"There is a painting in the world now that wasn't there before. You and I did that."
"What are you driving at?"
"I can't increase skill where there has been no practice, no earnest thought or desire. I can't help combine facts or memories where none have been stored. But within these limits I can help you and others to a degree of concentration few men of your world know."
"Could you teach us to concentrate this way on our own?"
"I don't know. We would have to try it. Meanwhile, I have been here long enough to have learned that your race has used horses to extend their powers of movement, dogs to increase their ability to trail by scent, cows and goats to convert indigestible grass and leaves into foodstuffs. These all were your partners in the physical world. It seems to me that I am much the same, but in the mental world."
Jim hesitated. "Meanwhile, you can help us to forget these dream lives?"
"Easily. But, as I say, the effect is not permanent."
Jim nodded. "I'll see what we can do."
He went to tell Walters, who listened closely, then picked up the phone.
Early the next morning, Jim climbed the steps to the high narrow door of the tower, put on dark glasses and went in. Right behind him came a corporal with a creepie-peepie TV transmitter. From outside came the windmill roar of helicopters, and, high up, the rumble of jets.
The corporal opened the shutter and spoke quietly into the microphone. A hissing voice spoke in Jim's mind. "I am ready."
Jim said, "This entire place is being watched by television. If there is any important difference between what observers here report and what the cameras show, this place and everything in it will be destroyed a few seconds later."
"I understand," said the hissing voice. Then it told him how to loosen one of the bars, and Jim loosened it and stood back.
There was the sound of footsteps on the staircase. A large heavy box with one end hinged and open was thrust in the doorway.
On the floor, something bunched and unbunched, and moved past into the box. Jim closed the box and snapped shut the padlock. Men lifted it and started down the staircase. Jim and the corporal followed. As they went out the front door, heavy planks were thrown across to a waiting truck. Sweating men in khaki carried the box up the planks into the truck. Then the rear doors swung shut, the engine roared, and the truck moved away.
Jim thought of the truck's destination, a pressure tank in a concrete blockhouse under a big steel shed out in the desert.
He looked around and saw Walters, who smiled at him and held out a slim envelope. "Good work," said Walters. "And I imagine some hundreds of ex-addicts reclaimed from mental hospitals are going to echo those sentiments."
Jim thanked him, and Walters led him to the car, saying, "Now what you need is sleep, and plenty of it."
"And how!"
Once home, Jim fell into an exhausted sleep, and had a nightmare. In the nightmare, he dreamed that he woke up, and found himself in a bed in a room where a light curtain blew in at the window, and the morning sun shone brightly in.
He sat up, and looked around carefully at the furniture, and felt the solid wall of the room as he asked himself a question that he knew would bother him again.
Which was the nightmare?
Then he remembered his fear as he climbed the tree, and Cullen's advice: "When things get tight, hold your mind on what to do next. Do that. Then think of the next step."
He thought a moment, then lay back and smiled. He might not be absolutely certain this was real. But even if it wasn't, he felt sure he would win in the end.
No nightmare could last forever.