Doppelgangers Page 2

  Had he been underground at that moment there would have been the routine, the seltzer, etc., to drag him over the dead center. Here there was nothing. The present was the lit, pleasant streets, the gay crowds, the easy, relaxed, deliberately entertained, amused, and distracted life. Below was a life going ever lower. And for him? In an hour or so a fate which he had to own was worse than death. He would be sacrificed for the Mole’s ever more obscure sense of purpose and goal and right. The moment had done it.

  He wouldn’t go on. He wasn’t breaking. He’d broken, broken with it all. He’d meet Alie; that, she’d told him, was her name. Tonight he wouldn’t be at 45.67.23. That spectral spider’s-web map of cryptic, sinister reference that lay and had lain all these months in his mind over the bright city would vanish away. He’d see things again as sane, aboveboard people saw them. He’d leave these nets and toils to those who cared to play with imaginary futures and nightmare presents. He wouldn’t judge them. There had always been, perhaps always had to be, people who played at that—the government and the opposition, whether they debated or, as now, actually dueled. But politics wasn’t life, and, more, it never got anywhere. He’d learned enough now to know that and, thank the bright sky, he’d learned enough to know how to get out of the cellars and tunnels back under that bright sky again and see that he wasn’t snarled. That was worth the learning. He knew enough to know how to keep clear.

  It was a lovely summer night, the moon full and sailing free with a few stars and some scales of mother-of-pearl clouds in attendance. His spirits rose to a level he hadn’t known for—he couldn’t remember how long. Often in those past months he had felt keyed—proud, keenly, grimly alive. But this was different; he felt careless, easy, a new sense of health began flowing in him. What fun to be meeting Alie tomorrow! He felt hungry, too. That was a good sign. He went into a restaurant and ordered a good meal. As he finished it, he saw, with an amused relief, as he looked at the clock, that he was already handsomely late. He dawdled out into the crowded, dense streets—wandering with only one will and direction—away from the rendezvous.

  No one would miss him. A man who went on an assignment disappeared, as far as his few bunkhouse companions went. To inquire was absolutely forbidden. You never mentioned him again, if he didn’t turn up. If he did, you went on, and so did he, as though the days he’d been out had disappeared. He’d be starting a fresh life anyway—anyone on assignment did. His Number, which was all that he was known by, would be shifted, someone else would be in his bunk. Oh, yes, they had brought anonymity to the frontier of total disappearance of the personality—so why not disappear? Besides, as his assignment had shown, no one had ever yet been planned to disappear so completely. He was being annihilated as a person. All right, he would go, go for good, for his good at last.

  His mind grew clearer and clearer. He wondered why he hadn’t done this before. He began to feel a kind of gratitude to them for pressing him out, extruding, exuding him. Who knows, perhaps the Mole, who seemed to know most things, had known he was through, and so used this method of shooting him back to the surface—as in old submarines when they’d sunk, you could escape by getting into the conning tower and shooting yourself back to the surface by opening the top hatch and going up in the uprush of the escaping air. The Mole would know he wouldn’t ever want to go down or make trouble again for either side. Melodrama and the Mole, you couldn’t think of them together. He cared for any personnel so little that the idea of revenge would have seemed to him as nonsensical as love at first sight.

  He was thinking this out, so true and so reassuring, that, as he was waiting for a traffic light to change, he saw the middle color flash. He hurried to cross and was nearly over before the GO sign took over. It would still have been all right had not one of the cars, drawn up and ready to go ahead, been impatient. It swung out a little ahead of the others. The driver was evidently a little tipsy, too. He made straight for the tardy crosser, but then, when nearly on him, fortunately swerved. The mudguard just missed his thigh. He would be missed by less than an inch. But as the door swung past it fell open. Queer—his mind thought even in that split second—a door opening the wrong way round. But, queer or no, he was caught in its jaw. He’d be knocked down and go under the hind wheel. He was knocked off his feet, but, by some kind of apron or web hanging between the swung-open door and the cab’s floor, he was caught, as mail used to be caught from a hanging bag by a grapple net held out from a passing train.

  He crashed, but fairly lightly, onto the cab’s floor, heard the door snap behind him, and felt hands take hold on him. It was dead dark in the cab but the hold told him all he needed. He knew those holds as well as a fingerprint expert knows the whorls on a glass or the butt of a gun. No one held like that unless he had had one of the basic trainings.

  Evidently Alpha wasn’t such a fool. He’d been wandering about in the upper world all those hours. Someone had been on the watch; this little dredge had been sent out, and here he was in the landing net, being hurried to the fish market to be filleted. Well, if they knew their moves, he knew his. He’d wait, and then when the pain became too skilled he’d step out from under.

  He didn’t then feel frightened, hardly angry, only a bit disappointed and a trifle annoyed with himself for thinking so much about getting free of the Mole that he’d stepped right under the hoof of the Bull. Certainly his holders didn’t feel they were to do anything. As long as he didn’t make them break his thumbs or push out his thyroid they weren’t going to forestall their successors’ duties. They’d deliver him intact as they had picked him up.

  He could hear nothing but the whir of the engine. They were going a good pace. And they went for a good while. The swish of other vehicles passing, also, had become rarer and rarer. They must be out in the country. And, after about half an hour of that, the swing and heave of the car showed that they must be on a byroad. That went on for a considerable time, too.

  When it changed for a hollow sound, he was pretty sure the journey must be practically over. They were now in some sort of tunnel. Yes, this would be one of the undergrounds.

  Alpha, who was the people’s friend, the friend of the good times, of children, of fun and frolic, the one who had banished tragedy from life, was up to date: he didn’t advertise the force necessary to keep the surface smooth. There weren’t any prisons, of course. There were mental homes, out to which most people who contracted hysteria or economic illusions went for a short treatment and generally were discharged cured, so that their friends and relations vowed that they were far nicer to be with than they had been. Of course, behind the mental homes were the country hospitals. No one ever saw these. But the patients often wrote from them saying they were quite comfortable and were making progress but that visits from relatives would upset them and delay cure.

  Alpha confessed he was no wizard. He couldn’t keep everyone happy or prevent a few people proving incurable.

  “But I am trying,” he would conclude one of his hygienic talks. “You go ahead and keep happy and healthy and I’ll go ahead and see how far down I can work your casualty rate.” And in the television sets you would see his flashing brave smile, that row of large white teeth that gave a humorous curve to the powerful mouth, those deep, capable eyes with the lines of a care that laughs at its own seriousness.

  Yes, the clichés about the Bull were true enough, and now he would be seeing, in a few moments, the truth under these easy phrases that the people loved to hear—what it cost to keep men carefree.

  The car had stopped. Without shifting their holds, the guards put him on his feet. Yes, he owned, they knew their stuff. Outside it was as dark as in the cab, and, after he was out and evidently headed where they wished, a hood slipped down over his head. In complete silence they walked perhaps a hundred yards. At one stage he was sure they went up a fairly long gradient. Then there were several turns and twists. He tried to count but was not sure, and he couldn’t hear a door open or shut. At last, though, he felt something
touch both his shins and, as that limit was reached, the holds were raised. He was loose.

  He stood for a moment, rather expecting a quick blow or perhaps the sudden thrust of the well-known hypodermic in the arm. But no. He listened. He must be alone. Cautiously he bent forward. Surely it couldn’t be anything so old-fashioned as the oubliette. He almost smiled when, putting out his hand gingerly to feel the brink from which he was just curbed below the kneecaps, he felt a bed. As he explored he made its shape, pillow to the right, an extra blanket thoughtfully and neatly folded across the foot. He could not help chuckling when, right in front, he found that not only was the sheet turned back but silk pajamas were laid out—what a neat laying-out our great artist in living does design, nothing neglected.

  He felt his way about. The room was undoubtedly on the small side, and smooth as the inside of an egg, so smooth that you couldn’t feel the door. Well, there was nothing in his store suit with which he had been provided that would give him away. The Mole knew enough about such things for him not to have to think of that. He threw off the coarse cheap worsted, smartly colored and cut as all suitings today were, but tawdry. It was a slight relief to put on the silk.

  Knowing how to wait was part of knowing how to keep cool. You had to live in the actual moment. In fact, he’d been one of the best pupils in the Chen method of standing torture—and the Chinese certainly were good testers—by dividing up the moment of consciousness into finer and finer moments and presents, until the pain impulse couldn’t get through or be sustained. He threw himself on the bed. He found that his mind wished to think of Alie. He let it; that again was part of the drill of detachment. He yawned and threw his arms behind his head. He was quite relaxed. He saw her as vividly as he had those hours ago in the park. They were wandering about together. She had just said that at last she’d found someone who seemed to grow more interesting every time since that first time they met months ago. He was on his back on the grass. It was summer.…

  But why have a rug over one’s feet? The air, too, had a tang. He roused himself. Asleep? He’d never known the exercises to end in unconsciousness until you intended them to! What a fool he was! Of course this was a gas chamber. The air was getting right, however, now. And light was coming. Very little and in a small beam. But it lit one spot and there was a tray. Of course, the stuff might be drugged, but then, what was the need? He’d been knocked out as delicately as a frog is pithed. He felt hungry and, anyhow, if he felt they were using any of the old-fashioned poisons he could always make himself vomit. He ate the meal and it was good. From his appetite he judged he must have been asleep some while.

  The light began to die. It shone, a faint circle, through part of the wall—one of those steel-hard plastics, he thought. Before it went he noticed that his clothes and watch had gone. He lay wide awake and his mind didn’t wander. He was then all the more surprised to hear a slight cough close to him—that kind of gentle clearing-of-the-throat someone will use who wishes deferentially to attract attention.

  “Who’s there?” he said, but he didn’t put out his hand. Somehow he shrank from that.

  The replying voice would have been a whisper but there was no sibilance in it: “We want co-operation.” Well, anyone might say that. “We’d much rather have a friend than have to use a tool—have someone who shares our point of view.”

  Yes, that could come from either side. Sometimes messages from the Mole had that sort of beginning. It worked with some people, with most, as long as you were new and had about you a good deal of the old superficial and surface vagueness.

  “You were picked for special reasons.”

  What was that? Did the counter-counters know?

  “It will be no end of trouble and perhaps a number of months, years almost, before quite such a fit can be found. Oh, yes, as you know, we can get brains as we like and make them take shape, but bodies are, we now know, harder. It wasn’t to be unexpected that you’d start under the shock. Your mind-body chart showed that. Your soft spot is physical vanity—the ordinary tough’s quick under his talon. So we were prepared—not surprised, not offended—quite natural, quite natural; and quite remediable. It would be serious only if that weren’t so. And we just can’t afford to lose you, so it won’t happen.”

  The voice was very low and quiet but into its neutrality there had been fed the slightest note of reassurance.

  “You slipped out and of course we slipped after you. We knew you would make that reaction, so we fetched you.”

  So he was back with the moles after all! That meant that in spite of all this rather puzzling preliminary he would be in the discard some time in the next few hours. Well, he must face it. They wouldn’t torture. Perhaps they’d let him stop his heart himself.

  There was a pause, and then the voice said, “You don’t yet quite seem to understand; we mustn’t have a second. You still really don’t want to go to the discard, and we want it even less. You can’t go back to the surface. We can always pull you down from there with more ease than a shark pulls down a poor swimmer. We have now a sure plan. You are the pin in it. Many boys would cut half their fingers off for it. And it really means that at last we’ll hit the bull’s eye.”

  He waited, but evidently the speaker had ended with a question. They had perhaps half a dozen exchanges.

  At the end he said, “I’ll think it over.” Then he thought of some more objections and began to put them. But nothing answered.

  He got up and groped round the room. It was undoubtedly empty. He went back and lay on the bed. It was clear that he was back, right in the middle of the net and they weren’t going to kill, yet; indeed, would go to almost any lengths not to kill: but would, if they couldn’t get their way. He must gain time.

  He spoke to the silence, “What if I consent?”

  There was no answer for a time, and then very faintly he heard, “Very well, very well.”

  “But why do you want my consent?” was answered more quickly.

  “We must have co-operation. You know that as well as we. Why, even in these first steps, you can ruin all. Certain grafts won’t take unless you’ll help. Still more, certain modulations, the person himself alone can make. They just can’t be made, unless the man at the center of the machine co-operates. We can hand you in the tools, but you alone can, inside, make the adjustments. They are far too delicate for any outsider to make. Who could make a singer sing by manipulating his chords for him? But men are taught how to use their own chords. And then, later on, more and more, it is you who will guide the bomber. You must be on your own.

  “Of course, we’ll kill you if you fail us. But if you don’t, you have us behind you; yes, ready to do as you, at the top-point, tell us you want done. You see, that’s the choice: fail us and we will kill. We must, though we certainly don’t want to—it’s an immense loss, more than you can judge. Come in, with us and you can have all you ask and get the prize singlehanded. You can’t get out of it now, except by death. There’s no choice for you but this big thing, for which any of your colleagues would have given their lives, or your life.”

  He still hit back, “Why not choose one of them?”

  “Don’t be forgetful. If you forget what you have been told, of course we’ll have to kill you at once. Forgetting—how often have you been told in your first training—is treason in an agent. He forgets because he wants to fail. We’ve told you that you have been chosen because you alone fit physically; you alone, of all the possible cadets, could act as a model. We knew your damned vanity, but that can’t be helped and we have put up with your attempt at a breakaway because your vanity can be cured, while your physique, at least in the selection at our disposal, is unique.”

  There was a silence after this. It was the longest speech he ever remembered having been given during an “instruction period.” He thought it over. It was clear that they were being lenient, uniquely lenient with him, and it was just as clear that, having made the circumstances as clear to him as they could, it was no
w up to him to die at once or to go on. After all, he could always die when it became too tough. And also it might lead to some new kind of liberty. A way out could possibly lie ahead. No way out now lay by going back. He went over the steps again. Yes, it was clear enough that was the only thing to do if he ever wanted to sleep again in a bed or have another meal.

  “Very well,” he said, and already into his voice, he recognized, there had crept a slight tone of equality. The old blind obedience, the service of the great hidden mind that directed them, the willing pawns, was over. He was now a man bargaining as an equal. He had something they would give anything to get and they could take his life if he wouldn’t yield. But dead he was almost as great a loss to them as to himself.

  And he thought he could just detect something almost like relief in the level super-whisper which answered, “That is right.” Then after a moment it went on, “Now that you are once more in with us and have accepted your promotion, you must be told of the various steps. We shall want you to be in the very best of health for this training, naturally. You are tired, and the success of our work depends greatly on your health being superfine. You are not only going to act; you are actually going, first, to grow, to grow quite, a lot. You understand, don’t you?”

  It was a grim question, but he managed to get out a gruff, “Of course.”

  “So, of course,” went on the voice, “you will need to be free of all toxins. You will be given deep colonic lavage in an hour’s time. It is very restful, besides being hygienic.” Again he grunted a consent and passed the hour checking back over the conversation. He always reached the same conclusion. There had been nothing else to do. So, when the light glowed again, he was passive.

  “It will be slow acting, so rest,” said the voice of the figure which had been kneeling behind him.