Stalking the Nightmare Part 20

The Professor was still tied to the seat, but his face had settled back into a shrewd, relieved smile. He had stalled it just long enough. Let Rondell run some more... just as he had forced him to run for twenty-eight years.

The running would soon come to an end.

"Now, boss?" It was the voice of a casino worker, from behind the draperies.

The Professor called out, "Yes. Get me off here."

The worker came out; a thin-faced little man with a bobcut hairdo. "I got the signal on the clear-out sequence.

I knew you wanted someone to wait behind and keep watch. I had this on him all the time." He held up an ancient projectile weapon. "Coulda plugged him any time. But I figured you knew I was watching."

"No, I didn't know you were watching."

"Jeez, I coulda swore you knew I was watching."

The Professor looked at him. He said, softly, "I didn't know."

"Yeah, I guess you din't. You sure looked scared as h.e.l.l, Perfesser. You was really sweatin'. But, see, I thought you must of known I was watching. That's why I din't punch him all that time."

"Clever of you."

"But, Jeez, if you din' t know, then, Jeez, you could of been really tore up by them piranhas, huh?"

"Yes. I could, huh."

"You want I should get the cops on him, Perfesser?"

The Professor's voice was low and nasty. "No, I don't want you to do anything. Just go home. And forget what happened tonight if you want to keep your s.h.i.+ft-card."

The thin-faced little man bobbled his head anxiously. "Yessir, Perfesser, yessir indeed. Whatever you say."

He walked away quickly, and as the drapes parted to swallow him, the fat man heard him say, "But, Jeez, you sure was sweatin'."

The Professor went back into the office and pa.s.sed his fingertips over a section of wall. His prints were instantly recognized, and a section slid up, revealing a private vid. He studded out a number, left the vision off, and said succinctly: "It will have to be tonight. Three AM. Have Dirt get to them. At her place, in thirty minutes."

A short sharp word acknowledged the message.

"Thirty years and more, and almost done," the Professor said to no one at all, clicking off the vid. The wall slid back down, and he fell into his seat. It rocked beneath him, and held him as he sat in misery and loneliness. His fat a bulwark against the chill that crept in softly.

In an age where wealth and opulence were commonplace, the people had maintained the Slum for kicks. I1 was fake and j.a.pery from one end to the other. I1 made people feel good to think there were still areas of mystery and intrigue, places where people poorer than themselves lived. The governmental system that always kept the Slum fully inhabited was too involved for anyone man to understand, but Rondell knew one family out of every four got the "call" to go to the Slum for a one year term on a demographic rotational basis. Heavy casino losers also were domiciled in the Slum. Phony dives and trumped-up excitement.

Rondell stalked through this sideshow Slum.

He found 6627A Broad Street without difficulty. It was a walk-up next to a place laughingly called The Hang-Dog House. He went up quickly, having found the name he sought on a plate downstairs. The door to the apartment was no trouble... an old-style slide-bolt he cut with the vibroblade.

Moonlight streamed down through a high window. and he could see the squalor typical of these artificial dumps. In the bed, a woman with dark-black-almost-blue-black hair slept, lying on her arm.

He crept toward the bed and hardly realized for a moment after the needle-nose was aimed at his head, that the disruptor was in her hand.

"Who are you?" she said softly. "Who sent you? What are you doing here?"

Her face was half-shadowed by the moonlight's angle, but even in the partial light he could see she washard-featured. Not particularly good-looking at all... in fact rather eagle-nosed and high-browed, but her naked body gleamed in the dusk of the flat. She had deep lines in her face, much like his own; and he could see a familiar narrowing of her eyes.

He told her quickly who he was, and from where he had come, and for how long he had been running. He told her because he was so tired of running and he wanted only answers himself, even as she wanted answers. He hid nothing; and as he talked quietly. the disruptor lowered.

Then she spoke to him. Her name was Elenessa, and she, too, had been running for a long, long time. As long as he. And her circ.u.mstances had been the same. The constant harrying by the society, on all sides. And a man named Zalenkoz, who was comparable in background to the Professor.

They sat and talked, and in a while, they knew each other. Better than a thousand years together, they knew what was under the skin and in the head of each. Because they had gone the same distance separately. So they were mated in mind when the rat-faced man knocked at the door.

Elenessa had thrown a wrap around herself. She sat on the edge of the bed, and when the knock came, she started violently. "Cops," she whispered. Rondell shrugged and pulled his disruptor. He motioned for her to open the door and slipped silently behind the frame. She walked lightly, on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet; as he walked.

When she threw open the door the rat-faced man standing there was caught unaware; he didn't have time to conceal the fact that he had been picking his nose.

A simple-minded grin flickered across his face, and his nose twitched like a gopher's. "Dirt's the name," he said. "I was sent by--"

Rondell was around the door, and the disruptor was leveled at the ridiculous little Slum dweller. "Get in here!

And I'll see if it's worthwhile letting you live."

The rat-faced little man thrust his hands into the air and his eyes grew large. "Hey, lissen, don't get cute wir that t'ing. I'm onny doin' what I was paid ta do. A big fat guy and a guy with real black hair an' a beard paid me--"

Elenessa broke in. "That sounds like your Professor... and Zalenkoz."

Rondell motioned with the disruptor for Dirt to finish what he had been saying. "They paid me to come and fetch ya. That's all. Honest."

"What do you mean, 'Fetch us'?"

The little man spread his hands, and then started to reach into a side pocket. "Hold it!"

"Just a piece of paper, chief, that's all," Dirt said.

"Just the same, hold it." Rondell went to him, felt in the man's pocket, and came up with a slip of paper. "This it?"

The little man nodded. Rondell unfolded it, and across the top was printed: FROM THE DESK OF THE PROFESSOR / CASINO ROW.

The paper had an address written on it. An address far uptown in the palatial Salazzo Plaza area. "This was where you were supposed to lead us?"

"That's right, chief. I got two extra hours added on my card for the job, so ya better lemme take ya, or I'll lose that time at the tables."

"Sure," Rondell answered, understandingly.

Then they trussed Dirt up, and prepared to find the tower in Salazzo Plaza.

The tower was alabaster; rising out of the night like an ivory fang, deadly and smooth. High up, ringing its top, a gigantic wheel of jewels sparkled against the night skyline of white and black and gold.

Rondell had no trouble with the portal. The vibroblade slid across the maglock and the entrance irised. It was dark inside. Darker than the night. Rondell unclipped a torch from his pouch-fold, and held it up, casting its sharp, thin light around. The place was empty. In the center of the room stood a suction tube, disappearing into the ceiling.

Rondell led the way, with Elenessa directly behind him, her step a.s.sured, the disruptor ready. They came into the center of the empty vestibules, stopped, looked around. It was silence on silence.

Then they started toward the droptube...

They could not move...

Lights went on. Suddenly, glaringly, alarmingly, lights flooded everything, and they were standing in the middle of a tensor-field. Beneath their feet an impregnated grid showed up through the total-conductivity floor. From the ceiling, vaulted high and. gold above them, the nozzles of tensor machines protruded, and from their snouts came the faint, high buzz of the directional ion-beams.

A speaker concealed somewhere in the walls whiffed, as though someone were blowing into it, to make sure it was on. Then a voice came through.

"Sorry to have to trick you, but we were quite certain you wouldn't come of your own volition. Not after the way we've treated you."

"Zalenkoz!" Elenessa screamed, straining motionlessly at the invisible bonds holding her.

"Yes, my child," he replied through the speaker, "the one man you despise."

"Let me free! I'll kill you!" But there was no release and she subsided into a vicious silence.

"So goodbye," Zalenkoz said.

A plate slid back in the ceiling, and a complex machine rolled down on tracks. It was aimed directly at them.

They heard a switch being knifed down, through the speaker, and knew that wherever he was in the tower, Zalenkozhad turned on the weird machine.

A blue ray shot from the mouth of the machine bathing them in radiation.

Rondell caught a glimpse of Elenessa from the corner of his eye. She was fading.

"Stop!" he screamed. "Stop! We deserve to know! Why are you killing us? I was told the answer was here!

We deserve to know!"

The ray was cut off--and Elenessa slowly came back to solidity. She was terribly frightened. "You--you were getting dim; you were disappearing," she said to Rondell.

He nodded. Through the speaker, with someone's hand imperfectly over the mike, they could hear Zalenkoz speaking to someone else. Then sounds of agreement, and Rondell heard a familiar voice.

"Rondell--"

"You!" the thief screamed, straining futilely at nothing.

"Rondell, let me speak." The Professor's voice overrode the thief's screams. "We have only a matter of three--what is it, Zalenkoz, four minutes and a few seconds... thanks--four minutes. You have to go through now, or the juncture points won't merge for another two years.

"And frankly, in your present state of mind, I'm afraid we couldn't satisfactorily hold either of you for that long."

Rondell tried to understand. It was hard getting past the hate.

"Over thirty years ago Zalenkoz and I found the key. The temporal-s.h.i.+ft. Not time, precisely, but something more involved. Something like worlds within worlds, though not quite that, either. Picture the Earth and make it two dimensional, like a paper cut-out. Then behind it, like two leaves of a book, another Earth. And another behind that. On and on and on, endlessly, an uncountable number of Earths--in fact, an uncountable number of universes--one after another, each slightly different, each waiting to be discovered.

"So we worked, and we found a way to slip a person through. But what good did it do us? No one would go.

Here is a world choking with overpopulation and corruption, laziness and dead souls; and everyone so decadent and smug they would never risk their lives to try a new frontier. Why do you think the s.p.a.ce colonies are dying out?

"So we thought of kidnapping them and sending them through. We tried it twice... and neither time did they live out a day. These aren't easy worlds, some of them. They are Earth... but a different Earth.

"We had to build our own pioneers. We had to create the right kind of person to live in a rugged new environment. So we used you, both of you, and separately went about ruining you for this culture. It was cruel, and it was unrewarding, and don't think we didn't suffer as much as you--but in a different way. Now you're ready. The harrying has turned out some fine stock. If you succeed, there will be others, and there may still be some hope for this rotting planet. You will have escaped your destiny!

"Do you understand?"

They understood, and their hatred was even greater.

Then the machine went on again, and they started to fade under the blue ray. Rondell felt himself slipping in an invisible pool of oil. He could see his right shoulder fading, and he screamed again, in terror.

He had to know one thing... he yelled once more, just before dematerializing, "Who am I? Where did I come from?"

And the Professor answered, "I--can't--tell--you."

Then they were gone.

The room was silent, and the blue ray vanished.

Then, through the speaker, hardly realizing it was still on, came the sound of crying. Then the voice of Zalenkoz, soothing the other, and Zalenkoz saying, "What is it they say? I think it was Shakespeare. 'It is a wise father that knows his own child.' What do you think, Professor... does the reverse apply?"

The fat man did not answer.

After a while the crying stopped.

SomeEarth, somewhere, somewhen, a man named Rondell and a woman named Elenessa found themselves in a primordial jungle. As they stood watching themselves solidify, a saber-toothed beast, vaguely like a cougar, dropped from one of the trees. In a moment, it had cornered them. Rondell and the woman backed up, and watched the beast come closer.

Then it leaped.

Twin disruptors came out, but would not punch. The beast sprang past and knocked the man to the ground.

Elenessa had her vibroblade drawn and was on the beast's back in a moment.

Soon, there was quiet, and blood, and they were alone again.

Alone, the man and woman who had run for a long, long time. Alone, with worlds to conquer.

And they would not bother with anything as ridiculous as calling themselves Adam and Eve.

The Hour That Stretches

The red light flashed ON THE AIR; hincty synthesizer music composed for the tone-deaf began going out at 90.7 megahertz; Burt Handelsman, crack engineer, made a circle with thumb and forefinger; and for the five hundred and forty-first time in the eleven years it had been on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles, Hour 25 was on the wing. The clock in the booth said 10:02 PM.

"Good evening, this is your host for Hour 25. Mike Hodel, and my guest tonight is Harlan Ellison. For those of you who have read Mr. Ellison's forty books, very close to almost one thousand short stories, articles, television columns, essays or commentaries; or who've seen his teleplays on commercial television... he needs no introduction.

For those of you to whom Harlan's name isn't a household word..."