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Authors: Richard Matheson

Duel (11 page)

BOOK: Duel
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The universe poured by again, the black night washing over him like ocean waves. This time he didn't lose consciousness.
He was secure.
 
The chamber stopped vibrating. The silence was almost deafening. Wade sat breathlessly in the semidarkness, gasping in air. Then he grabbed the wheel and turned it quickly. He kicked open the door and jumped down into the apparatus lab of Fort College and looked around, hungry for the sight of familiar things.
The lab was empty. One wall light shone down bleakly in the silence, casting great shadows of machines, sending his own shadow leaping
up the walls. He touched benches, stools, gauges, machines, anything, just to convince himself that he was back.
“It's real.” He said it over and over.
An overpowering weakness of relief fell over him a mantle. He leaned against the chamber. Here and there he saw black marks on the metal, and pieces of it were hanging loose. He felt almost a love for it. Even partly destroyed it had gotten him back.
Suddenly he looked at the clock. Two in the morning … . Mary … . He had to get home. Quickly, quickly.
The door was locked. He fumbled for keys, got the door open and rushed down the hall. The building was deserted. He reached the front door, unlocked it, remembered to lock it behind him, although he was shaking with excitement.
He tried to walk, but he kept breaking into a run, and his mind raced ahead in anticipation. He was on the porch, through the doorway, rushing up to the bedroom … . Mary, Mary, he was calling … . He was bursting through the doorway … . She was standing by the window. She whirled, saw him, a look of glorious happiness crossed her face. She cried out in tearful joy … . They were holding each other, kissing; together, together.
“Mary,” he murmured in a choked-up voice as, once more, he began running.
The tall black Social Sciences Building was behind him. Now the campus was behind him, and he was running happily down University Avenue.
The street lights seemed to waver before him. His chest heaved with shuddering breaths. A burning ache stabbed at his side. His mouth fell open. Exhausted, he was forced to slow down to a walk. He gasped in air, started to run again.
Only two more blocks.
Ahead, the dark outline of his home stood out against the sky. There was a light in the living room. She was awake. She hadn't given up!
His heart flew out to her. The desire for her warm arms was almost more than he could bear.
He felt tired. He slowed down, felt his limbs trembling violently. Excitement. His body ached. He felt numb.
He was on their walk. The front door was open. Through the screen door, he could see the stairs to the second floor. He paused, his eyes glittering with a sick hunger.
“Home,” he muttered.
He staggered up the path, up the porch steps. Shooting pains wracked his body. His head felt as though it would explode.
He pulled open the screen door and lurched to the living room arch.
John Randall's wife was sleeping on the couch.
There was no time to talk. He wanted Mary. He turned and stumbled to the stairs. He started up.
He tripped, almost fell. He groped for the banister with his right hand. A scream gurgled up and died in his throat.
The hand was dissolving in air.
His mouth fell open as the horror struck him.
“No!” He tried to scream it but only a mocking wheeze escaped his lips.
He struggled up. The disintegration was going on faster. His hands. His wrists. They were flying apart. He felt as though he had been thrown into a vat of burning acid.
His mind twisted over itself as he tried to understand. And all the while he kept dragging himself up the stairs, now on his ankles, now on his knees, the corroded remnants of his disappearing legs.
Then he knew all of it. Why the chamber door was locked. Why they wouldn't let him see his own corpse. Why his body had lasted so long. It was because he had reached 2475 alive and
then
had died. Now he had to return to that year. He could not be with her
even in death
.
“Mary!”
He tried to scream for her. She had to know. But no sound came. He felt pieces of his throat falling out. Somehow he had to reach her, let her know that he had come back.
He reached the top of the landing and through the open door of their room saw her lying on the bed, sleeping in exhausted sorrow.
He called. No sound. Tears of rage poured from his anguished eyes. Now he was at the door, trying to force himself into the room.
There'd be no life for me without you
.
Her remembered words tortured him. His crying was like a gentle bubbling of lava.
Now he was almost gone. The last of him poured over the rug like a morning mist, the blackness of his eyes like dark shiny beads in a swirling fog.
“Mary, Mary—” he could only think it now “—how very much I love you.”
She didn't awaken.
He willed himself closer and drank in the fleeting sight of her. A massive despair weighed on his mind. A faint groan fluttered over his wraith.
Then, the woman, smiling in her uneasy sleep, was alone in the room except for two haunted eyes which hung suspended for a moment and then were gone; like tiny worlds that flare up in birth and, in the same moment, die.
HE STEPPED INTO THE SUNLIGHT AND WALKED among the people. His feet carried him away from the black tube depths. The distant roar of underground machinery left his brain to be replaced by myriad whispers of the city.
Now he was walking the main street. Men of flesh and men of steel passed him by, coming and going. His legs moved slowly and his footsteps were lost in a thousand footsteps.
He passed a building that had died in the last war. There were scurrying men and robots pulling off the rubble to build again. Over their heads hung the control ship and he saw men looking down to see that work was done properly.
He slipped in and out among the crowd. No fear of being seen. Only inside of him was there a difference. Eyes would never know it. Visio-poles set at every corner could not glean the change. In form and visage he was just like all the rest.
He looked at the sky. He was the only one. The others didn't know about the sky. It was only when you broke away that you could see. He saw a rocket ship flashing across the sun and control ships hovering in a sky rich with blue and fluffy clouds.
The dull-eyed people glanced at him suspiciously and hurried on. The blank-faced robots made no sign. They clanked on past, holding their envelopes and their packages in long metal arms.
He lowered his eyes and kept walking. A man cannot look at the sky, he thought. It is suspect to look at the sky.
“Would you help a buddy?”
He paused and his eyes flicked down to the card on the man's chest.
Ex-Space Pilot
.
Blind. Legalized Beggar
.
Signed by the stamp of the Control Commissioner. He put his hand on the blind man's shoulder. The man did not speak but passed by and moved on, his cane clacking on the sidewalk until he had disappeared. It was not allowed to beg in this district. They would find him soon.
He turned from watching and strode on. The visio-poles had seen him pause and touch the blind man. It was not permitted to pause on business streets, to touch another.
He passed a metal news dispenser and, brushing by, pulled out a sheet. He continued on and held it up before his eyes.
Income Taxes Raised. Military Draft Raised. Prices Raised
.
Those were the story heads. He turned it over. On the back was an editorial that told why Earth forces had been compelled to destroy all the Martians.
Something clicked in his mind and his fingers closed slowly in a tight fist.
He passed his people, men and robots both. What distinction now? he asked himself. The common classes did the same work as the robots. Together they walked or drove through the streets, carrying and delivering.
To be a man, he thought. No longer is it a blessing, a pride, a gift. To be brother to the machine, used and broken by invisible men who
kept their eyes on poles and their fists bunched in ships that hung over all their heads, waiting to strike at opposition.
When it came to you one day that this was so, you saw there was no reason to go on with it.
He stopped in the shade and his eyes blinked. He looked in the shop window. There were tiny baby creatures in a cage.
Buy a Venus Baby For Your Child
, said the card.
He looked into the eyes of the small tentacled things and saw there intelligence and pleading misery. And he passed on, ashamed of what one people can do to another people.
Something stirred within his body. He lurched a little and pressed his hand against his head. His shoulders twitched. When a man is sick, he thought, he cannot work. And when a man cannot work, he is not wanted.
He stepped into the street and a huge Control truck ground to a stop inches before him.
He walked away jerkily, leaped upon the sidewalk. Someone shouted and he ran. Now the photo-cells would follow him. He tried to lose himself in the moving crowds. People whirled by, an endless blur of faces and bodies.
They would be searching now. When a man stepped in front of a vehicle he was suspect. To wish death was not allowed. He had to escape before they caught him and took him to the Adjustment Center. He couldn't bear that.
People and robots rushed past him, messengers, delivery boys, the bottom level of an era. All going somewhere. In all these scurrying thousands, only he had no place to go, no bundle to deliver, no slavish duty to perform. He was adrift.
Street after street, block on block. He felt his body weaving. He was going to collapse soon, he felt. He was weak. He wanted to stop. But he couldn't stop. Not now. If he paused—sat down to rest—they would come for him and take him to the Adjustment Center. He didn't want to be adjusted. He didn't want to be made once more into a
stupid shuffling machine. It was better to be in anguish and to understand.
He stumbled on. Bleating horns tore at his brain. Neon eyes blinked down at him as he walked.
He tried to walk straight, but his system was giving way. Were they following? He would have to be careful. He kept his face blank and he walked as steadily as he could.
His knee joint stiffened and, as he bent to rub it in his hands, a wave of darkness leaped from the ground and clawed at him. He staggered against a plate-glass window.
He shook his head and saw a man staring from inside. He pushed away. The man came out and stared at him in fear. The photo-cells picked him up and followed him. He had to hurry. He couldn't be brought back to start all over again. He'd rather be dead.
A sudden idea. Cold water. Only to drink?
I'm going to die, he thought. But I will know why I am dying and that will be different. I have left the laboratory where, daily, I was sated with calculations for bombs and gasses and bacterial sprays.
All through those long days and nights of plotting destruction, the truth was growing in my brain. Connections were weakening, indoctrinations faltering as effort fought with apathy.
And, finally, something gave, and all that was left was weariness and truth and a great desire to be at peace.
And now he had escaped and he would never go back. His brain had snapped forever and they would never adjust him again.
He came to the citizen's park, last outpost for the old, the crippled, the useless. Where they could hide away and rest and wait for death.
He entered through the wide gate and looked at the high walls which stretched beyond sight. The walls that hid the ugliness from outside eyes. It was safe here. They did not care if a man died inside the citizen's park.
This is my island, he thought. I have found a silent place. There are
no probing photo-cells here and no ears listening. A person can be free here.
His legs felt suddenly weak and he leaned against a blackened dead tree and sank down into the moldy leaves lying deep on the ground.
An old man came by and stared at him suspiciously. The old man walked on. He could not stop to talk for minds were still the same even when the shackles had been burst.
Two old ladies passed him by. They looked at him and whispered to one another. He was not an old person. He was not allowed in the citizen's park. The Control Police might follow him. There was danger and they hurried on, casting frightened glances over their lean shoulders. When he came near they scurried over the hill.
He walked. Far off he heard a siren. The high, screeching siren of the Control Police cars. Were they after him? Did they know he was there? He hurried on, his body twitching as he loped up a sun-baked hill and down the other side. The lake, he thought, I am looking for the lake.
He saw a fountain and stepped down the slope and stood by it. There was an old man bent over it. It was the man who had passed him. The old man's lips enveloped the thin stream of water.
He stood there quietly, shaking. The old man did not know he was there. He drank and drank. The water dashed and sparkled in the sun. His hands reached out for the old man. The old man felt his touch and jerked away, water running across his gray-bearded chin. He backed away, staring open-mouthed. He turned quickly and hobbled away.
He saw the old man run. Then he bent over the fountain. The water gurgled in his mouth. It ran down and up into his mouth and poured out again, tastelessly.
 
He straightened up suddenly, a sick burning in his chest. The sun faded to his eye, the sky became black. He stumbled about on the pavement, his mouth opening and closing. He tripped over the edge of the walk and fell to his knees on the dry ground.
He crawled in on the dead grass and fell on his back, his stomach grinding, water running over his chin.
He lay there with the sun shining on his face and he looked at it without blinking. Then he raised his hands and put them over his eyes.
An ant crawled across his wrist. He looked at it stupidly. Then he put the ant between two fingers and squashed it to a pulp.
He sat up. He couldn't stay where he was. Already they might be searching the park, their cold eyes scanning the hills, moving like a horrible tide through his last outpost where old people were allowed to think if they were able to.
He got up and staggered around clumsily and started for the path, stiff-legged, looking for a lake.
He turned a bend and walked in a weaving line. He heard whistles. He heard a distant shout. They
were
looking for him. Even here in the citizen's park where he thought he could escape. And find the lake in peace.
He passed an old shut-down merry-go-round. He saw the little wooden horses in gay poses, galloping high and motionless, caught fast in time. Green and orange with heavy tassels, all covered with thick dust.
He reached a sunken walk and started down it. There were gray stone walls on both sides. Sirens were all around in the air. They knew he was loose and they were coming to get him now. A man could not escape. It was not done.
He shuffled across the road and moved up the path. Turning, he saw, far off, men running. They wore black uniforms and they were waving at him. He hurried on, his feet thudding endlessly on the concrete walk.
He ran off the path and up a hill and tumbled in the grass. He crawled into scarlet-leaved bushes and watched through waves of dizziness as the men of the Control Police dashed by.
Then he got up and started off, limping, his eyes staring ahead.
At last, the shifting, dull glitter of the lake. He hurried on now,
stumbling and tripping. Only a little way. He lurched across a field. The air was thick with the smell of rotting grass. He crashed through the bushes and there were shouts and someone fired a gun. He looked back stiffly to see the men running after him.
He plunged into the water, flopping on his chest with a great splash. He struggled forward, walking on the bottom until the water had flooded over his chest, his shoulders, his head. Still walking while it washed into his mouth and filled his throat and weighted his body, dragging him down.
His eyes were wide and staring as he slid gently forward onto his face on the bottom. His fingers closed in the silt and he made no move.
 
Later, the Control Police dragged him out and threw him in the black truck and drove off.
And, inside, the technician tore off the sheeting and shook his head at the sight of tangled coils and water-soaked machinery.
“They go bad,” he muttered as he probed with pliers and picks. “They crack up and think they are men and go wandering. Too bad they don't work as good as people.”
BOOK: Duel
13.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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