He glanced at Lefevre, who was replying to the man.
Clark heard nothing. He saw the lips move, watched as Lefevre gestured and smiled, but he heard nothing.
“It’s a trick,” he said aloud. “You’re only pretending to talk. You’re trying to frighten me.”
At this, Lefevre turned to Clark and said something, shaking his head. Clark tried to read the lips but could not… “You’re trying to frighten me.”
And then, he became aware that he heard nothing at all in the room. Normal sounds—feet on the carpet, the ticking of a clock on the desk, the sounds of breathing, movement, the rain outside—he heard nothing. He could not even hear the beating of his own—
“My heart,” he said, and put his hand to his chest. He felt nothing. Suddenly afraid, he reached for his wrist to feel the pulse.
There was no pulse.
“My heart has stopped.”
They had poisoned him. He felt a coldness creep over him, beginning in his hands and legs and ears, moving toward the center of his body. An icy, gray coldness.
“You’re killing me.”
The room was still silent, the men still standing and watching him. He took a deep breath, but his lungs weren’t working; the air caught in his throat; he was dizzy and gasping.
They were killing him.
For a moment, he was able to sit in the chair and tell himself, This isn’t happening, it’s only a drug, and then in the next moment panic washed over him. He leapt up and scrambled for the door. The men stood and watched him as he clawed at the doorknob, his cold fingers slipping off the metal, his hands barely able to grasp and touch. He was shaking now, his body vibrating in an uncontrollable way.
He fell to his knees, weak and shaking, and leaned against the door. He felt two arms lifting him up, and setting him down in the chair once more.
Lefevre, behind the desk, lit a cigar, puffing gray smoke at Clark. Clark watched the smoke billow toward him. So that was it: poison gas. The drug was just a ruse. Actually, they were using gas.
He sniffed the air, and smelled nothing for a moment. Then he began to smell rich tobacco, and then…. something else.
Acrid, sharp, burning.
Poison gas.
Lefevre, watching him, laughed soundlessly. Smoke curled out from his mouth as he laughed.
Clark was bathed in a cold sweat. He continued to shake and shiver. He closed his eyes and turned away from the gas, a last, final gesture of avoidance, postponing the inevitable.
Then something new happened. He felt cool air around him, fresh and clean; he heard voices, and he stopped shaking.
When he opened his eyes, Lefevre was handing him the towel and saying, “Not bad, eh?”
Clark could not speak. He sat in the chair, weak and exhausted, gasping for breath.
“Of course,” Lefevre said, “that was only a small dose. Fifteen seconds—that’s all we let you go through—and even that on a small dose. You didn’t even dream. And,” he said, “you may be thankful for that.”
He sat down behind the desk.
“However, Dr. Clark, the next time we will not use a small dose, and we will not limit the stress to fifteen seconds. I can assure you the experience will be vastly more unpleasant.” He sighed.
“It is a most interesting drug, you know,” he said. “In the experimental trials on monkeys and chimpanzees, we found that the animals did not survive prolonged exposure to the effects. They all killed themselves, in the most bizarre ways. One spider monkey strangled itself with its tail—very curious. You see, the drug is intolerable. A creature will do anything to be free of its influence. Anything. I think you can understand that.”
“I think so,” Clark said, wiping his face with the towel.
“Good. Then let us get down to business. There is a lady in room fourteen with a bad sunburn on her back. It needs attending. The gentleman in room twelve has incipient bronchopneumonia. He needs medication. The woman in….”
Clark listened, and when Lefevre was through, he went to work.
In the following days, he came to understand the system of the resort very well. Guests were given an initial dose of the drug in their mango punch; thereafter, it was administered as a simple white pill, taken with a glass of water. The drug was given by an attendant, who stood by, watching to be sure it was taken.
The duration of drug effect seemed to be sixteen hours, and it was remarkably constant. Dosages and schedules for each guest were charted on a large sheet at the registration desk. Nearby was another large sheet, which listed some personal information about each guest, his predominant fantasies about what was happening (“Vigorous sportsman. Has been hunting and fishing all trip.” “Compulsive gambler, on big winning streak.” “Spending vacation with secretary, name of Alice.”) in order to guide the waiters who had to interact with the guests, from time to time.
Every second day, each guest was given a “high”, meaning an episode of pleasure-coma brought on by a hum from the television set. Lefevre explained that the highs had to be spaced out, because of the intensity of the experience.
Meals were brought around three times a day to guests not on a high. They were prepared in a dingy kitchen, located behind the main building of the hotel. The food was always abominable, but it was delivered in a careful way.
The waiter would bring the tray, and set it down. He would say to the guest, “Where would you like to dine tonight?”
“Oh, the main ball dining room.”
“That’s where you are.”
“Oh, good.”
The waiter would then say, “And what would you like for dinner?”
“May I see the menu please?”
“You have it in your hand.”
“Oh yes,” the guest would say. “So I do.” He would stare down at his empty hands. “Now let me see…is your crab fresh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I’ll have the crab. To begin, caviar. And a bottle of Dom Perignon ’49.”
“Very good sir. And here you are.” The waiter would indicate the tray.
“Superb,” the guest would say, beginning to eat “Marvelous food, really marvelous.”
Lefevre had an additional comment about the food. “You know,” he said, “most of our guests lose weight during their stay here. They think they are eating heartily, and think it is excellent, but in fact they don’t eat a lot. So they lose—two pounds, three pounds, five pounds. They notice it on the way home, and are invariably pleased. They think they’ve been so active and vigorous that the weight was lost despite their heavy eating. It is a peculiarity of our culture,” he said, “that nobody is unhappy about losing weight.”
The guests spent nearly all of their time in their rooms. On sunny days, they would be taken out to the balcony to lie in the sun and get tanned; otherwise, they were hardly bothered. Every second day a group of “fixers” would go around to each room, talking to the guests. The fixers were people who reinforced fantasies by altering the environment.
There were three fixers, a psychologist, a sociologist and Lefevre himself. Clark went with them on their rounds one day.
They talked to one guest who said, “I made love to my wife on the beach last night and I got sand in my trousers.” He chuckled. “Tore them, too.”
Lefevre poured sand into the man’s trouser cuffs, and tore them slightly.
“What else?”
“I had a wonderful meal last night, but I was a little tipsy. I got some shrimp sauce on my tie.”
The sociologist went to the closet, found a tie, and poured catsup over it.
In the next room, a woman reported that she had gone swimming in the ocean and had forgetfully taken her watch; it was now stopped.
“So it is,” Lefevre said, slipping it off her wrist and dropping it into a glass of salt water.