The Dark Door by Alan Edward Nourse
1
It was almost dark when he awoke, and lay
on the bed, motionless and
trembling, his heart sinking in the knowledge
that he should never have
slept.
For almost half a minute, eyes wide with fear,
he lay in the
silence of the gloomy room, straining to hear
some sound, some
indication of their presence.
But the only sound was the barely audible
hum of his wrist watch and the
dismal splatter of raindrops on the cobbled
street outside.
There was no
sound to feed his fear, yet he knew then,
without a flicker of doubt,
that they were going to kill him.
He shook his head, trying to clear the sleep
from his brain as he turned
the idea over and over in his mind.
He wondered why he hadn't realized
it before, long before, back when they had
first started this horrible,
nerve-wracking cat-and-mouse game.
The idea just hadn't occurred to him.
But he knew the game-playing was over.
They wanted to kill him now.
And
he knew that ultimately they _would_ kill
him.
There was no way for him
to escape.
He sat up on the edge of the bed, painfully,
perspiration standing out
on his bare back, and he waited, listening.
How could he have slept,
exposing himself so helplessly?
Every ounce of his energy, all the skill
and wit and shrewdness at his command were
necessary in this cruel hunt;
yet he had taken the incredibly terrible chance
of sleeping, of losing
consciousness, leaving himself wide open and
helpless against the attack
which he knew was inevitable.
How much had he lost?
How close had they come while he slept?
Fearfully, he walked to the window, peered
out, and felt his muscles
relax a little.
The gray, foggy streets were still light.
He still had a
little time before the terrible night began.
He stumbled across the small, old-fashioned
room, sensing that action of
some sort was desperately needed.
The bathroom was tiny; he stared in
the battered, stained reflector unit, shocked
at the red-eyed
stubble-faced apparition that stared back
at him.
This is Harry Scott, he thought, thirty-two
years old, and in the prime
of life, but not the same Harry Scott who
started out on a ridiculous
quest so many months ago.
This Harry Scott was being hunted like an
animal, driven by fear, helpless, and sure
to die, unless he could find
an escape, somehow.
But there were too many of them for him to
escape,
and they were too clever, and they _knew_
he knew too much.
He stepped into the shower-shave unit, trying
to relax, to collect his
racing thoughts.
Above all, he tried to stay the fear that
burned
through his mind, driving him to panic and
desperation.
The memory of
the last hellish night was too stark to allow
relaxation--the growing
fear, the silent, desperate hunt through the
night; the realization that
their numbers were increasing; his frantic
search for a hiding place in
the New City; and finally his panic-stricken,
pell-mell flight down into
the alleys and cobbled streets and crumbling
frame buildings of the Old
City....
Even more horrible, the friends who had turned
on him, who
turned out to be _like_ them.
Back in the bedroom, he lay down again, his
body still tense.
There were
sounds in the building, footsteps moving around
on the floor overhead, a
door banging somewhere.
With every sound, every breath of noise, his
muscles tightened still further, freezing
him in fear.
His own breath
was shallow and rapid in his ears as he lay,
listening, waiting.
If only something would happen!
He wanted to scream, to bang his head
against the wall, to run about the room smashing
his fist into doors,
breaking every piece of furniture.
It was the _waiting_, the eternal
waiting, and running, waiting some more, feeling
the net drawing tighter
and tighter as he waited, feeling the measured,
unhurried tread behind
him, always following, coming closer and closer,
as though he were a
mouse on a string, twisting and jerking helplessly.
If only they would move, do something he could
counter.
But he wasn't even sure any more that he could
detect them.
And they
were so careful never to move into the open.
He jumped up feverishly, moved to the window,
and peered between the
slats of the dusty, old-fashioned blind at
the street below.
An empty street at first, wet, gloomy.
He saw no one.
Then he caught the
flicker of light in an entry several doors
down and across the street,
as a dark figure sparked a cigarette to life.
Harry felt the chill run
down his back again.
Still there, then, still waiting, a hidden
figure,
always present, always waiting....
Harry's eyes scanned the rest of the street
rapidly.
Two three-wheelers
rumbled by, their rubber hissing on the wet
pavement.
One of them
carried the blue-and-white of the Old City
police, but the car didn't
slow up or hesitate as it passed the dark
figure in the doorway.
They
would never help me anyway, Harry thought
bitterly.
He had tried that
before, and met with ridicule and threats.
There would be no help from
the police in the Old City.
Another figure came around a corner.
There was something vaguely
familiar about the tall body and broad shoulders
as the man walked
across the wet street, something Harry faintly
recognized from somewhere
during the spinning madness of the past few
weeks.
The man's eyes turned up toward the window
for the briefest instant,
then returned steadfastly to the street.
Oh, they were sly!
You could
never spot them looking at you, never for
_sure_, but they were always
there, always nearby.
And there was no one he could trust any longer,
no
one to whom he could turn.
Not even George Webber.
Swiftly his mind reconsidered that possibility
as he watched the figure
move down the street.
True, Dr. Webber had started him out on this
search in the first place.
But even Webber would never believe what he
had found.
Webber was a scientist, a researcher.
What could he do--go to Webber and tell him
that there were men alive in
the world who were _not_ men, who were somehow
men and something more?
Could he walk into Dr. Webber's office in
the Hoffman Medical Center,
walk through the gleaming bright corridors,
past the shining metallic
doors, and tell Dr. Webber that he had found
people alive in the world
who could actually see in four dimensions,
live in four dimensions,
_think_ in four dimensions?
Could he explain to Dr. Webber that he knew
this simply because in some
way he had sensed them, and traced them, and
discovered them; that he
had not one iota of proof, except that he
was being followed by them,
hunted by them, even now, in a room in the
Old City, waiting for them to
strike him down?
He shook his head, almost sobbing.
That was what was so horrible.
He
couldn't tell Webber, because Webber would
be certain that he had gone
mad, just like the rest.
He couldn't tell anyone, he couldn't do
anything.
He could just wait, and run, and wait--
It was almost dark now and the creaking of
the old board house
intensified the fear that tore at Harry Scott's
mind.
Tonight was the
night; he was sure of it.
Maybe he had been foolish in coming here to
the slum area, where the buildings were relatively
unguarded, where
anybody could come and go as he pleased.
But the New City had hardly
been safer, even in the swankiest private
chamber in the highest
building.
They had had agents there, too, hunting him,
driving home the
bitter lesson of fear they had to teach him.
Now he was afraid enough;
now they were ready to kill him.
Down below he heard a door bang, and he froze,
his back against the
wall.
There were footsteps, quiet voices, barely
audible.
His whole body
shook and his eyes slid around to the window.
The figure in the doorway
still waited--but the other figure was not
visible.
He heard the steps
on the stair, ascending slowly, steadily,
a tread that paced itself with
the powerful throbbing of his own pulse.
Then the telephone screamed out--
Harry gasped.
The footsteps were on the floor below, moving
steadily
upward.
The telephone rang again and again; the shrill
jangling filled
the room insistently.
He waited until he couldn't wait any longer.
His
hand fumbled in a pocket and leveled a tiny,
dull-gray metal object at
the door.
With the other hand, he took the receiver
from the hook.
"Harry!
Is that you?"
His throat was like sandpaper and the words
came out in a rasp.
"What is
it?"
"Harry, this is George--George Webber."
His eyes were glued to the door.
"All right.
What do you want?"
"You've got to come talk to us, Harry.
We've been waiting for weeks now.
You promised us.
We've _got_ to talk to you."
Harry still watched the door, but his breath
came easier.
The footsteps
moved with ridiculous slowness up the stairs,
down the hall toward the
room.
"What do you want me to do?
They've come to kill me."
There was a long pause.
"Harry, are you sure?"
"Dead sure."
"Can you make a break for it?"
Harry blinked.
"I could try.
But it won't do any good."
"Well, at least try, Harry.
Get here to the Hoffman Center.
We'll help
you all we can."
"I'll try."
Harry's words were hardly audible as he set
the receiver
down with a trembling hand.
The room was silent.
The footsteps had stopped.
A wave of panic passed
up Harry's spine; he crossed the room, threw
open the door, stared up
and down the hall, unbelieving.
The hall was empty.
He started down toward the stairs at a dead
run, and
then, too late, saw the faint golden glow
of a Parkinson Field across
the dingy corridor.
He gasped in fear, and screamed out once as
he
struck it.
And then, for seconds stretching into hours,
he heard his scream echoing
and re-echoing down long, bitter miles of
hollow corridor.
2
George Webber leaned back in the soft chair,
turning a quizzical glance
toward the younger man across the room.
He lit a long black cigar.
"Well?"
His heavy voice boomed out in the small room.
"Now that we've
got him here, what do you think?"
The younger man glanced uncomfortably through
the glass wall panel into
the small dark room beyond.
In the dimness, he could barely make out the
still form on the bed, grotesque with the
electrode-vernier apparatus
already in place at its temples.
Dr. Manelli looked away sharply, and
leafed through the thick sheaf of chart papers
in his hand.
"I don't know," he said dully.
"I just don't know what to think."
The other man's laugh seemed to rise from
the depths of his huge chest.
His heavy face creased into a thousand wrinkles.
Dr. Webber was a large
man, his broad shoulders carrying a suggestion
of immense power that
matched the intensity of his dark, wide-set
eyes.
He watched Dr.
Manelli's discomfort grow, saw the younger
doctor's ears grow red, and
the almost cruel lines in his face were masked
as he laughed still
louder.
"Trouble with you, Frank, you just don't have
the courage of your
convictions."
"Well, I don't see anything so funny about
it!"
Manelli's eyes were
angry.
"The man has a suspicious syndrome--so you've
followed him, and
spied on him for weeks on end, which isn't
exactly highest ethical
practice in collecting a history.
I still can't see how you're
justified."
Dr. Webber snorted, tossing his cigar down
on the desk with disgust.
"The man is insane.
That's my justification.
He's out of touch with
reality.
He's wandered into a wild, impossible, fantastic
dream world.
And we've got to get him out of it, because
what he knows, what he's
trying to hide from us, is so incredibly dangerous
that we don't dare
let him go."
The big man stared at Manelli, his dark eyes
flashing.
"Can't you see
that?
Or would you rather sit back and let Harry
Scott go the way that
Paulus and Wineberg and the others went?"
"But to use the Parkinson Field on him--"
Dr. Manelli shook his head
hopelessly.
"He'd offered to come over, George.
We didn't need to use
it."
"Sure, he offered to come--fine, fine.
But supposing he changed his mind
on the way?
For all we know, he had us figured into his
paranoia, too,
and never would have come near the Hoffman
Center."
Dr. Webber shook his head.
"We're not playing a game any more, Frank.
Get that straight.
I thought it was a game a couple of years
ago, when
we first started.
But it ceased to be a game when men like Paulus
and
Wineberg walked in sane, healthy men, and
came out blubbering idiots.
That's no game any more.
We're onto something big.
And, if Harry Scott
can lead us to the core of it, then I can't
care too much what happens
to Harry Scott."
Dr. Manelli stood up sharply, walked to the
window, and looked down over
the bright, clean buildings of the Hoffman
Medical Center.
Out across
the terraced park that surrounded the glassed
towers and shining metal
of the Center rose the New City, tier upon
tier of smooth, functional
architecture, a city of dreams built up painfully
out of the rubble of
the older, ruined city.
"You could kill him," the young man said finally.
"The psycho-integrator
isn't any standard interrogative technique;
it's dangerous and
treacherous.
You never know for sure just what you're doing
when you dig
down into a man's brain tissue with those
little electrode probes."
"But we can learn the truth about Harry Scott,"
Dr. Webber broke in.
"Six months ago, Harry Scott was working with
us, a quiet, affable,
pleasant young fellow, extremely intelligent,
intensely co-operative.
He
was just the man we needed to work with us,
an engineer who could take
our data and case histories, study them, and
subject them to a
completely nonmedical analysis.
Oh, we had to have it done--the
problem's been with us for a hundred years
now, growing ever since the
1950s and 60s--insanity in the population,
growing, spreading without
rhyme or reason, insinuating itself into every
nook and cranny of our
civilized life."
The big man blinked at Manelli.
"Harry Scott was the new approach.
We
were too close to the problem.
We needed a nonmedical outsider to take a
look, to tell us what we were missing.
So Harry Scott walked into the
problem, and then abruptly lost contact with
us.
We finally track him
down and find him gone, out of touch with
reality, on the same wretched
road that all the others went.
With Harry, it's paranoia.
He's being
persecuted; he has the whole world against
him, but most important--the
factor we don't dare overlook--_he's no longer
working on the problem_."
Manelli shifted uneasily.
"I suppose that's right."
"Of course it's right!"
Dr. Webber's eyes flashed.
"Harry found
something in those statistics.
Something about the data, or the case
histories; or something Harry Scott himself
dug up opened a door for him
to go through, a door that none of us ever
dreamed existed.
We don't
know what he found on the other side of that
door.
Oh, we know what he
_thinks_ he found, all this garbage about
people that look normal but
walk through walls when nobody's looking,
who think around corners
instead of in straight-line logic.
But what he _really_ found there, we
don't have any way of telling.
We just know that whatever he _really_
found is something new, something unsuspected;
something so dangerous it
can drive an intelligent man into the wildest
delusions of paranoid
persecution."
A new light appeared in Dr. Manelli's eyes
as he faced the other doctor.
"Wait a minute," he said softly.
"The integrator is an _experimental_
instrument, too."
Dr. Webber smiled slyly.
"Now you're beginning to think," he said.
"But you'll see only what Scott himself believes.
And _he_ thinks his
story is true."
"Then we'll have to break his story."
"_Break_ it?"
"Certainly.
For some reason, this delusion of persecution
is far safer
for Harry Scott than facing what he really
found out.
What we've got to
do is to make this delusion _less_ safe than
the truth."
The room was silent for a long moment.
Manelli looked up, his fingers
trembling.
"Let's hear it."
"It's very simple.
Up to now, Harry Scott has had _delusions_
of
persecution.
But now we're _really_ going to persecute
Harry Scott, as
he's never been persecuted before."
3
At first he thought he was at the bottom of
a deep well and he lay quite
still, his eyes clamped shut, wondering where
he was and how he could
possibly have gotten there.
He could feel the dampness and chill of the
stone floor under him, and nearby he heard
the damp, insistent drip of
water splashing against stone.
He felt his muscles tighten as the
dripping sound forced itself against his senses.
Then he opened his
eyes.
His first impulse was to scream out wildly
in unreasoning, suffocating
fear.
He fought it down, struggling to sit up in
the blackness, his
whole mind turned in bitter, hopeless hatred
at the ones who had hunted
him for so long, and now had trapped him.
Why?
Why did they torture him?
Why not kill him outright, have done with
it?
He shuddered, and struggled to his feet, staring
about him in horror.
It was not a well, but a small room, circular,
with little rivulets of
stale water running down the granite walls.
The ceiling closed low over
his head, and the only source of light came
from the single doorway
opening into a long, low stone passageway.
Wave after wave of panic rose in Harry's throat.
Each time he fought
down the urge to scream, to lie down on the
ground and cover his face
with his hands and scream in helpless fear.
How could they have known
the horror that lay in his own mind, the horror
of darkness, of damp
slimy walls and scurrying rodents, of the
clinging, stale humidity of
dungeon passageways?
He himself had seldom recalled it, except
in his
most hideous dreams, yet he had known such
fear as a boy, so many years
ago, and now it was all around him.
They had known somehow and _used it
against him_.
Why?
He sank down on the floor, his head in his
hands, trying to think
straight, to find some clue in the turmoil
bubbling through his mind
that would tell him what had happened.
He had started down the hallway from his room,
to find Dr. Webber and
tell him about the other people--
He stopped short, looked up wide-eyed.
_Had_ he been going to Dr.
Webber?
Had he actually decided to go?
Perhaps--yes, perhaps he had,
though Webber would only laugh at such a ridiculous
story.
But the
not-men who had hunted him would not laugh;
to them, it would not be
funny.
They knew that it was true.
And they knew he knew it was true.
_But why not kill him?_ Why this torture?
Why this horrible persecution
that dug into the depths of his own nightmares
to haunt him?
His breath came fast and a chilly sweat broke
out on his forehead.
_Where_ was he?
Was this some long forgotten vault in the
depths of the
Old City?
Or was this another place, another world,
perhaps, that the
not-men, with their impossible powers, had
created to torture him?
His eyes sought the end of the hall, saw the
turn at the end, saw the
light which seemed to come from the end; and
then in an instant he was
running down the damp passageway, his pulse
pounding at his temples,
until he could hardly gasp enough breath as
he ran.
Finally he reached
the turn in the corridor where the light was
brighter, and he swung
around to stare at the source of the light,
a huge, burning, smoky torch
which hung from the wall.
Even as he looked at it, the torch went out,
shutting him into inky
blackness.
The only sound at first was the desperation
of his own
breath; then he heard little scurrying sounds
around his feet, and
screamed involuntarily as something sleek
and four-footed jumped at his
chest with snapping jaws.
Shuddering, he fought the thing off, his fingers
closing on wiry fur as
he caught and squeezed.
The thing went limp, and suddenly melted in
his
hands.
He heard it splash as it struck the damp ground
at his feet.
_What were they doing to his mind?_
He screamed out in horror, and followed the
echoes of his own scream as
he ran down the stone corridor, blindly, slipping
on the wet stone
floor, falling on his knees into inches of
brackish water, scraping back
to his feet with an uncontrollable convulsion
of fear and loathing, only
to run more--
The corridor suddenly broke into two and he
stopped short.
He didn't
know how far, or how long, he had run, but
it suddenly occurred to him
that he was still alive, still safe.
Only his mind was under attack,
only his mind was afraid, teetering on the
edge of control.
And this
maze of dungeon tunnels--where could such
a thing exist, so perfectly
outfitted to horrify him, so neatly fitting
into his own pattern of
childhood fears and terrors; from where could
such a _very individual_
attack on his sanity have sprung?
From nowhere except....
_Except from his own mind!_
For an instant, he saw a flicker of light,
thought he grasped the edge
of a concept previously obscure to him.
He stared around him, at the
mist swirling down the damp, dark corridor,
and thought of the rat that
had melted in his hand.
Suddenly, his mind was afire, searching through
his experience with the strange not-men he
had learned to detect, trying
to remember everything he had learned and
deduced about them before they
began their brutal persecution.
They were men, and they looked like men, but
they were different.
They
had other properties of mind, other capabilities
that men did not have.
They were not-men.
They could exist, and co-exist, two people
in one
frame, one person known, realized by all who
saw, the other one
concealed except from those who learned how
to look.
They could use
their minds; they could rationalize correctly;
they could use their
curious four-dimensional knowledge to bring
them to answers no
three-dimensional man could reach.
_But they couldn't project into men's minds!_
Carefully, Harry peered down the misty tunnels.
They were clever, these
creatures, and powerful.
Since they had discovered that he knew them,
they had done their work of fear and terror
on his mind skillfully.
But
they were limited, too; they couldn't make
things happen that were not
true--fantasies, illusions....
Yes, this dungeon was an illusion.
It _had_ to be.
He cursed and started down the right-hand
corridor, his heart sinking.
There was no such place and he knew it.
He was walking in a dream, a
fantasy that had no substance, that could
do no more than frighten him,
drive him insane; yet he must already have
lost his mind to be accepting
such an illusion.
Why had he delayed?
Why hadn't he gone to the Hoffman Center,
laid the
whole story before Dr. Webber and Dr. Manelli
at the very first, told
them what he had found?
True, they might have thought him insane,
but
they wouldn't have put him to torture.
They might even have believed him
enough to investigate what he told them, and
then the cat would have
been out of the bag.
The tale would have been incredible, but at
least
his mind would have been safe.
He turned down another corridor and walked
suddenly into waist-deep
water, so cold it numbed his legs.
He stopped again to force back the
tendrils of unreasoning horror that brushed
his mind.
Nothing could
really harm him.
He would merely wait until his mind finally
reached a
balance again.
There might be no end; it might be a ghastly
trap, but he
would wait.
Strangely, the mist was becoming greenish
in color as it swirled toward
him in the damp vaulted passageway.
His eyes began watering a little and
the lining of his nose started to burn.
He stopped short, newly alarmed,
and stared at the walls, rubbing the tears
away to clear his vision.
The
greenish-yellow haze grew thicker, catching
his eyes and burning like a
thousand furies, ripping into his throat until
he was choking and
coughing, as though great knives sliced through
his lungs.
He tried to scream, and started running, blindly.
Each gasping breath
was an agony as the blistering gas dug deeper
and deeper into his lungs.
Reason departed from him; he was screaming
incoherently as he stumbled
up a stony ramp, crashed into a wall, spun
around and smashed blindly
into another.
Then something caught at his shirt.
He felt the heavy planks and pounded iron
scrollwork of a huge door, and
threw himself upon it, wrenching at the old
latch until the door swung
open with a screech of rusty hinges.
He fell forward on his face, and
the door swung shut behind him.
He lay face down, panting and sobbing in the
stillness.
Coarse hands grasped his collar, jerking him
rudely to his feet, and he
opened his eyes.
Across the dim, vaulted room he could see
the shadowy
form of a man, a big man, with a broad chest
and powerful shoulders, a
man whose rich voice Harry almost recognized,
but whose face was deep in
shadow.
As Harry wiped the tears from his tortured
eyes, he heard the
man's voice rumble out at him:
"Perhaps you've had enough now to change your
mind about telling us the
truth."
Harry stared, not quite comprehending.
"The--the truth?"
The man's voice was harsh, cutting across
the room impatiently.
"The
truth, I said.
The problem, you fool, what you saw, what
you learned;
you know perfectly well what I'm referring
to.
But we'll swallow no more
of this silly four-dimensional superman tale,
so don't bother to start
it."
"I--I don't understand you.
It's--it's true--" Again he tried to peer
across the room.
"Why are you hunting me like this?
What are you trying
to do to me?"
"We want the truth.
We want to know what you saw."
"But--but _you're_ what I saw.
You know what I found out.
I mean--" He
stopped, his face going white.
His hand went to his mouth, and he
stared still harder.
"Who are you?"
he whispered.
"The truth!" the man roared.
"You'd better be quick, or you'll be back
in the corridor."
"_Webber!_"
"Your last chance, Harry."
Without warning, Harry was across the room,
flying across the desk,
crashing into the big man's chest.
With a scream of fury he fought,
driving his fists into the powerful chest,
wrenching at the thick,
flailing arms of the startled man.
"_It's you!_" he screamed.
"It's you that's been torturing me.
It's you
that's been hunting me down all this time,
not the other people, you and
your crowd of ghouls have been at my throat!"
He threw the big man off balance, dropped
heavily on him as he fell back
to the ground, glared down into the other's
angry brown eyes.
And then, as though he had never been there
at all, the big man
vanished, and Harry sat back on the floor,
his whole body shaking with
frustrated sobs as his mind twisted in anguish.
He had been wrong, completely wrong, ever
since he had discovered the
not-men.
Because he had thought _they_ had been the
ones who hunted and
tortured him for so long.
And now he knew how far he had been wrong.
For
the face of the shadowy man, the man behind
the nightmare he was living,
was the face of Dr. George Webber.
"You're a fool," said Dr. Manelli sharply,
as he turned away from the
sleeping figure on the bed to face the older
man.
"Of all the ridiculous
things, to let him connect you with this!"
The young doctor turned
abruptly and sank down in a chair, glowering
at Dr. Webber.
"You haven't
gotten to first base yet, but you've just
given Scott enough evidence
to free himself from integrator control altogether,
if he gives it any
thought.
But I suppose you realize that."
"Nonsense," Dr. Webber retorted.
"He had enough information to do that
when we first started.
I'm no more worried now than I was then.
I'm sure
he doesn't know enough about the psycho-integrator
to be able
voluntarily to control the patient-operator
relationship to any degree.
Oh, no, he's safe enough.
But you've missed the whole point of that
little interview."
Dr. Webber grinned at Manelli.
"I'm afraid I have.
It looked to me like useless bravado."
"The persecution, man, the _persecution_!
He's shifted his sights!
Before that interview, the _not-men_ were
torturing him, remember?
Because they were afraid he would report his
findings to me, of course.
But now it's _I_ that's against him."
The grin widened.
"You see where
that leads?"
"You're talking almost as though you believed
this story about a
different sort of people among us."
Dr. Webber shrugged.
"Perhaps I do."
"Oh, come now, George."
Dr. Webber's eyebrows went up and the grin
disappeared from his face.
"Harry Scott believes it, Frank.
We mustn't forget that, or miss its
significance.
Before Harry started this investigation of
his, he
wouldn't have paid any attention to such nonsense.
But he believes it
now."
"But Harry Scott is insane.
You said it yourself."
"Ah, yes," said Dr. Webber.
"Insane.
Just like the others who started to
get somewhere along those lines of investigation.
Try to analyze the
growing incidence of insanity in the population
and you yourself go
insane.
You've got to be crazy to be a psychiatrist.
It's an old joke,
but it isn't very funny any more.
And it's too much for coincidence.
"And then consider the nature of the insanity--a
full-blown
paranoia--oh, it's amazing.
A cunning organization of men who are
_not_-men, a regular fairy story, all straight
from Harry Scott's agile
young mind.
But now it's _we_ who are persecuting him,
_and he still
believes his fairy tale_."
"So?"
Dr. Webber's eyes flashed angrily.
"It's too neat, Frank.
It's clever,
and it's powerful, whatever we've run up against.
But I think we've got
an ace in the hole.
We have Harry Scott."
"And you really think he'll lead us somewhere?"
Dr. Webber laughed.
"That door I spoke of that Harry peeked through,
I
think he'll go back to it again.
I think he's started to open that door
already.
And this time I'm going to follow him through."
4
It seemed incredible, yet Harry Scott knew
he had not been mistaken.
It
had been Dr. Webber's face he had seen, a
face no one could forget, an
unmistakable face.
And that meant that it had been Dr. Webber
who had
been persecuting him.
But why?
He had been going to report to Webber when
he had run into that
golden field in the rooming-house hallway.
And suddenly things had
changed.
Harry felt a chill reaching to his fingers
and toes.
Yes, something had
changed, all right.
The attack on him had suddenly become butcherous,
cruel, sneaking into his mind somehow to use
his most dreaded nightmares
against him.
There was no telling what new horrors might
be waiting for
him.
But he knew that he would lose his mind unless
he could find an
escape.
He was on his feet, his heart pounding.
He had to get out of here,
wherever he was.
He had to get back to town, back to the city,
back to
where people were.
If he could find a place to hide, a place
where he
could rest, he could try to think his way
out of this ridiculous maze,
or at least try to understand it.
He wrenched at the door to the passageway,
started through, and smashed
face-up against a solid brick wall.
He cried out and jumped back from the wall.
Blood trickled from his
nose.
The door was _walled up_, the mortar dry and
hard.
Frantically, he glanced around the room.
There were no other doors, only
the row of tiny windows around the ceiling
of the room, pale, ghostly
squares of light.
He pulled the chair over to the windows, peered
out through the
cobwebbed openings to the corridor beyond.
It was not the same hallway as before, but
an old, dirty building
corridor, incredibly aged, with bricks sagging
away from the walls.
At
the end he could see stairs, and even the
faintest hint of sunlight
coming from above.
Wildly, he tore at the masonry of the window,
chipping away at the soggy
mortar with his fingers until he could squeeze
through the opening.
He
fell to the floor of the corridor outside.
It was much colder and the silence was no
longer so intense.
He seemed
to feel, rather than hear, the surging power,
the rumble of many
machines, the little, almost palpable vibrations
from far above him.
He started in a dead run down the musty corridor
to the stairs and began
to climb them, almost stumbling over himself
in his eagerness.
After several flights, the brick walls gave
way to cleaner plastic, and
suddenly a brightly lighted corridor stretched
before him.
Panting from the climb, Harry ran down the
corridor to the end, wrenched
open a door, and looked out anxiously.
He was almost stunned by the bright light.
At first he couldn't orient
himself as he stared down at the metal ramp,
the moving strips of
glowing metal carrying the throngs of people,
sliding along the
thoroughfare before him, unaware of him watching,
unaware of any change
from the usual.
The towering buildings before him rose to
unbelievable
heights, bathed in ever-changing rainbow colors,
and he felt his pulse
thumping in his temples as he gaped.
He was in the New City, of that there was
no doubt.
This was the part of
the great metropolis which had been built
again since the devastating
war that had nearly wiped the city from the
Earth a decade before.
These
were the moving streets, the beautiful residential
apartments, following
the modern neo-functional patterns and participational
design which had
completely altered the pattern of city living.
The Old City still
remained, of course--the slums, the tenements,
the skid-rows of the
metropolis--but this was the teeming heart
of the city, a new home for
men to live in.
And this was the stronghold where the not-men
could be found, too.
The
thought cut through Harry's mind, sending
a tremor up his spine.
He had
found them here; he had uncovered his first
clues here, and discovered
them; and even now his mind was filled with
the horrible, paralyzing
fear he had felt that first night when he
had made the discovery.
Yet he
knew now that he dared not go back where he
had come from.
At least he could understand why the not-men
might have feared and
persecuted him, but he could not understand
the horrible assault that
Dr. Webber had unleashed.
And somehow he found Dr. Webber's attack
infinitely more frightening.
He seemed to be safe here, though, at least
for the moment.
Quickly he moved down onto the nearest moving
sidewalk heading toward
the living section of the New City.
He knew where he could go there,
where he could lock himself in, a place where
he could think, possibly
find a way to fight off Dr. Webber's attack
of nightmares.
He settled back on a bench on the moving sidewalk,
watching the city
slide past him for several minutes before
he noticed the curious
shadow-form which seemed to whisk out of his
field of vision every time
he looked.
They were following him again!
He looked around wildly as the sidewalk
moved swiftly through the cool evening air.
Far above, he could see the
shimmering, iridescent screen that still stood
to protect the New City
from the devastating virus attacks which might
again strike down from
the skies without warning.
Far ahead he could see the magnificent
"bridge" formed by the sidewalk crossing over
to the apartment area,
where the thousands who worked in the New
City were returning to their
homes.
Someone was still following him.
Presently he heard the sound, so close to
his ear he jumped, yet so
small he could hardly identify it as a human
voice.
"What was it you
found, Harry?
What did you discover?
Better tell, better tell."
He saw the rift in the moving sidewalk coming,
far ahead, a great,
gaping rent in the metal fabric of the swiftly
moving escalator, as if a
huge blade were slicing it down the middle.
Harry's hand went to his
mouth, choking back a scream as the hole moved
with incredible rapidity
down the center of the strip, swallowing up
whole rows of the seats,
moving straight toward his own.
He glanced in fright over the side just as
the sidewalk moved out onto
the "bridge," and he gasped as he saw the
towering canyons of buildings
fall far below, saw the seats tumble end over
end, heard the sounds of
screaming blend into the roar of air by his
ears.
Then the rift screamed by him with a demoniac
whine and he sank back
onto his bench, gasping as the two cloven
halves of the strip clanged
back together again.
He stared at the people around him on the
strip and they stared back at
him, mildly, unperturbed, and returned to
their evening papers as the
strip passed through the first local station
on the other side of the
"bridge."
Harry Scott sprang to his feet, moving swiftly
across the slower strips
for the exit channels.
He noted the station stop vaguely, but his
only
thought now was speed, desperate speed, fear-driven
speed to put into
action the plan that had suddenly burst in
his mind.
He knew that he had reached his limit.
He had come to a point beyond
which he couldn't fight alone.
Somehow, Webber had burrowed into his brain,
laid his mind open to
attacks of nightmare and madness that he could
never hope to fight.
Facing this alone, he would lose his mind.
His only hope was to go for
help to the ones he feared only slightly less,
the ones who had minds
capable of fighting back for him.
He crossed under the moveable sidewalks and
boarded the one going back
into the heart of the city.
Somewhere there, he hoped, he would find the
help he needed.
Somewhere back in that city were men he had
discovered
who were men and something more.
Frank Manelli carefully took the blood pressure
of the sleeping figure
on the bed; then turned to the other man.
"He'll be dead soon," he
snapped.
"Another few minutes now is all it'll take.
Just a few more."
"Absurd.
There's nothing in these stimuli that can
kill him."
George
Webber sat tense, his eyes fixed on the pale
fluctuating screen near the
head of the bed.
"His own mind can kill him!
He's on the run now; you've broken him loose
from his nice safe paranoia.
His mind is retreating, running back to
some other delusions.
It's escaping to the safety his fantasy people
can
afford him, these not-men he thinks about."
"Yes, yes," agreed Dr. Webber, his eyes eager.
"Oh, he's on the run
now."
"But what will he do when he finds there aren't
any 'not-men' to save
him?
What will he do then?"
Webber looked up, frowning and grim.
"Then we'll know what he found
behind the dark door that he opened, that's
what."
"No, you're wrong!
He'll die.
He'll find nothing and the shock will
kill him.
My God, Webber, you can't tamper with a man's
mind like this
and hope to save his life!
You're obsessed; you've always been obsessed
by this impossible search for something in
our society, some
undiscovered factor to account for the mental
illness, the divergent
minds, but you can't kill a man to trace it
down!"
"It's too neat," said Webber.
"He comes back to tell us the truth, and
we call him insane.
We say he's paranoid, throw him in restraint,
place
him in an asylum; and we never _know_ what
he found.
The truth is too
incredible; when we hear it, it must be insanity
we're hearing."
The big doctor laughed, jabbing his thumb
at the screen.
"This isn't
insanity we're seeing.
Oh, no, this is the answer we're following.
I
won't stop now.
I've waited too long for this show."
"Well, I say stop it while he's still alive."
Dr. Webber's eyes were deadly.
"Get out, Frank," he said softly.
"I'm
not stopping now."
His eyes returned to the screen, to the bobbing
figure that the
psycho-integrator traced on the fluorescent
background.
Twenty years of
search had led him here, and now he knew the
end was at hand.
5
It was a wild, nightmarish journey.
At every step, Harry's senses
betrayed him: his wrist watch turned into
a brilliant blue-green snake
that snapped at his wrist; the air was full
of snarling creatures that
threatened him at every step.
But he fought them off, knowing that they
would harm him far less than panic would.
He had no idea where to hunt,
nor whom to try to reach, but he knew they
were there in the New City,
and somehow he knew they would help him, if
only he could find them.
He got off the moving strip as soon as the
lights of the center of the
city were clear below, and stepped into the
self-operated lift that
sped down to ground level.
From the elevator, he moved on to one of the
long, honeycombed concourses, filled with
passing shoppers who stared at
the colorful, enticing three-dimensional displays.
At one of the intersections ahead, he spotted
a visiphone station, and
dropped onto the little seat before the screen.
There had been a number,
if only he could recall it.
But as he started to dial, the silvery
screen shattered into a thousand sparkling
glass chips, showering the
floor with crystal and sparks.
Harry cursed, grabbed the hand instrument,
and jangled frantically for
the operator.
Before she could answer, the instrument grew
warm in his
hand, then hot and soft, like wax.
Slowly, it melted and ran down his
arm.
He bolted out into the stream of people, trying
desperately to draw some
comfort from the crowd around him.
He felt utterly alone; he _had_ to contact
the not-men who were in the
city, warn them, before they spotted him,
of the attack he carried with
him.
If he were leading his pursuer, he could expect
no mercy from the
ones whose help he sought.
He knew the lengths to which they would go
to
remain undetected in the society around them.
Yet he had to find them.
In the distance, he saw a figure waiting,
back against one of the show
windows.
Harry stopped short, ducked into a doorway,
and peered out
fearfully.
Their eyes locked for an instant; then the
figure moved on.
Harry felt a jolt of horror surge through
him.
Dr. Webber hunting him in
person!
He ducked out of the doorway, turned and ran
madly in the opposite
direction, searching for an up escalator he
could catch.
Behind him he
heard shots, heard the angry whine of bullets
past his ear.
He breathed in great, gasping sobs as he found
an almost empty
escalator, and bounded up it four steps at
a time.
Below, he could see
Webber coming too, his broad shoulders forcing
their way relentlessly
through the mill of people.
Panting, Harry reached the top, checked his
location against a wall map,
and started down the long ramp which led toward
the building he had
tried to call.
Another shot broke out behind him.
The wall alongside powdered away,
leaving a gaping hole.
On impulse, he leaped into the hole, running
through to the rear of the building as the
weakened wall swayed and
crumbled into a heap of rubble just as Webber
reached the place Harry
had entered.
Harry breathed a sigh of relief and raced
up the stairs of the building
to reach a ramp on another level.
He turned his eyes toward the tall
building at the end of the concourse.
There he could hide and relax and
try, somehow, to make a contact.
Someone fell into step beside him and took
his arm gently but firmly.
Harry jerked away, turning terrified eyes
to the one who had joined him.
"Quiet," said the man, steering him over toward
the edge of the
concourse.
"Not a sound.
You'll be all right."
Harry felt a tremor pass through his mind,
the barest touching of mental
fingertips, a recognition that sent a surge
of eager blood through his
heart.
He stopped short, facing the man.
"I'm being followed," he gasped.
"You
can't take me anywhere you don't want Webber
to follow, or you'll be in
terrible danger."
The stranger shrugged and smiled briefly.
"You're not here.
You're in a
psycho-integrator.
It can hurt you, if you let it.
But it can't hurt
me."
He stepped up his pace slightly, and in a
moment they turned
abruptly into a darkened cul-de-sac.
Suddenly, they were moving _through_ the wall
of the building into the
brilliantly lit lobby of the tall building.
Harry gasped, but the
stranger led him without a sound toward the
elevator, stepped aboard
with him, and sped upward, the silence broken
only by the
whish-whish-whish of the passing floors.
Finally they stepped out into a
quiet corridor and down through a small office
door.
A man sat behind the desk in the office, his
face quiet, his eyes very
wide and dark.
He hardly glanced at Harry, but turned his
eyes to the
other man.
"Set?" he asked.
"Couldn't miss now."
The man nodded and looked at last at Harry.
"You're upset," he murmured.
"What's bothering you?"
"Webber," said Harry hoarsely.
"He's following me here.
He'll spot you.
I tried to warn you before I came, but I couldn't."
The man at the desk smiled.
"Webber again, eh?
Our old friend Webber.
That's all right.
Webber's at the end of his tether.
There's nothing he
can do to stop us.
He's trying to attack with force, and he fails
to
realize that time and thought are on our side.
The time when force would
have succeeded against us is long past.
But now there are many of us,
almost as many as not."
Harry stared shrewdly at the man behind the
desk.
"Then why are you so
afraid of Webber?" he asked.
"Afraid?"
"You know you are.
Long ago you threatened me, if I reported
to him.
You
watched me, played with me.
Why are you afraid of him?"
The man sighed.
"Webber is premature.
We are stalling for time, that's
all.
We wait.
We have grown from so very few, back in the
1940s and 50s,
but the time for quiet usurpation of power
has not quite arrived.
But
men like Webber force our hand, discover us,
try to expose us."
Harry Scott's face was white, his hands shaking.
"And what do you do to
them?"
"We--deal with them."
"And those like me?"
The man smiled lopsidedly.
"Those like Paulus and Wineberg and the
rest--they're happy, really, like little children.
But one like you is
so much more useful."
He pointed almost apologetically to the small
screen on his desk.
Harry looked at it, realization dawning.
He watched the huge,
broad-shouldered figure moving down the hallway
toward the door.
"Webber was dangerous to you?"
"Unbelievably dangerous.
So dangerous we would use any means to trap
him."
Suddenly the door burst open and there stood
Webber, a triumphant
Webber, face flushed, eyes wide, as he stared
at the man behind the
desk.
The man smiled back and said, "Come on in,
George.
We've been waiting
for you."
Webber stepped through the door.
"Manelli, you fool!"
There was a blinding flash as he crossed the
threshold.
A faint crackle
of sound reached Harry's ears; then the world
blacked out....
It might have been minutes, or hours, or days.
The man who had been
behind the desk was leaning over Harry, smiling
down at him, gently
bandaging the trephine wounds at his temples.
"Gently," he said, as Harry tried to sit up.
"Don't try to move.
You've
been through a rough time."
Harry peered up at him.
"You're--not Dr. Webber."
"No.
I'm Dr. Manelli.
Dr. Webber's been called away--an accident.
He'll
be some time recovering.
I'll be taking care of you."
Vaguely, Harry was aware that something was
peculiar, something not
quite as it should be.
The answer slowly dawned on him.
"The statistical analysis!" he exclaimed.
"I was supposed to get some
data from Dr. Webber about an analysis, something
about rising insanity
rates."
Dr. Manelli looked blank.
"Insanity rates?
You must be mistaken.
You
were brought here for an immunity examination,
nothing more.
But you
can check with Dr. Webber, when he gets back."
6
George Webber sat in the little room, trembling,
listening, his eyes
wide in the thick, misty darkness.
He knew it would be a matter of time
now.
He couldn't run much farther.
He hadn't seen them, true.
Oh, they
had been very clever, but they thought they
were dealing with a fool,
and they weren't.
He _knew_ they'd been following him; he'd
known it for
a long time now.
It was just as he had been telling the man
downstairs the night before:
they were everywhere--your neighbor upstairs,
the butcher on the corner,
your own son or daughter, maybe even the man
you were talking
to--_everywhere_!
And of course he had to warn as many people
as he possibly could before
_they_ caught him, throttled him off, as they
had threatened to if he
talked to anyone.
If only the people would _listen_ to him when
he told them how cleverly
it was all planned, how it would only be a
matter of months, maybe only
weeks or days before the change would happen,
and the world would be
quietly, silently taken over by the _other_
people, the different people
who could walk through walls and think in
impossibly complex channels.
And no one would know the difference, because
business would go on as
usual.
He shivered, sinking down lower on the bed.
If only people would listen
to him--
It wouldn't be long now.
He had heard the stealthy footsteps on the
landing below his room some time ago.
This was the night they had chosen
to make good their threats, to choke off his
dangerous voice once and
for all.
There were footsteps on the stairs now, growing
louder.
Wildly he glanced around the room as the steps
moved down the hall
toward his door.
He rushed to the window, threw up the sash
and
screamed hoarsely to the silent street below:
"Look out!
They're here,
all around us!
They're planning to take over!
Look out!
Look out!"
The door burst open and there were two men
moving toward him,
grim-faced, dressed in white; tall, strong
men with sad faces and strong
arms.
One was saying, "Better come quietly, mister.
No need to wake up the
whole town."
End of The Dark Door by Alan Edward Nourse
