He hit squarely; but he had reckoned without the advances of modern science. The window bent outward like a sheet of rubber, and snapped back into place. He was thrown against a wall, and fell dazed to the floor. Looking up, he saw a heavy bureau wobble toward him and slowly tilt.
As the poltergeist threw his lunatic strength against the bureau, the unwatched door swung open. Smith entered the room, his thick-featured zombie face impassive, and deflected the falling bureau with his shoulder.
“Come on,” he said.
Blaine asked no questions. He scrambled to his feet and grabbed the edge of the closing door. With Smith's help he pulled it open again, and the two men slipped out. From within the room he heard a shriek of baffled rage.
Smith hurried down the hall, one cold hand clasped around Blaine's wrist. They went downstairs, through the hotel lobby and into the street. The zombie's face was leaden white except for the purple bruise where Blaine had struck him. The bruise had spread across nearly half his face, pie-balding it into a Harlequin's grotesque mask.
“Where are we going?” Blaine asked.
“To a safe place.”
They reached an ancient unused subway entrance, and descended. One flight down they came to a small iron door set in the cracked concrete door. Smith opened the door and beckoned Blaine to follow him.
Blaine hesitated, and caught the hint of high-pitched laughter. The poltergeist was pursuing him, as the Eumenides had once pursued their victims through the streets of ancient Athens. He could stay in the lighted upper world if he wished, hag-ridden by an insane spirit. Or he could descend with Smith, through the iron door and into the darkness beyond it, to some uncertain destiny in the underworld.
The shrill laughter increased. Blaine hesitated no longer. He followed Smith through the iron door and closed it behind him.
For the moment, the poltergeist had not chosen to pursue. They walked down a tunnel lighted by an occasional naked light bulb, past cracked masonry pipes and the looming gray corpse of a subway train, past rusted iron cables lying in giant serpent coils. The air was moist and rank, and a thin slime underfoot made walking treacherous.
“Where are we going?” Blaine asked.
“To where I can protect you,” Smith said.
“Can you?”
“Spirits aren't invulnerable. Exorcism is possible if the true identity of the ghost is known.”
“Then you know who is haunting me?”
“I think so. There's only one person it logically could be.”
“Who?”
Smith shook his head. “I'd rather not say his name yet. No sense calling him if he's not here.”
They descended a series of crumbling shale steps into a wider chamber, and circled the edge of a small black pond whose surface looked as hard and still as jet. On the other side of the pond was a passageway. A man stood in front of it, blocking the way.
He was a tall husky Negro, dressed in rags, armed with a length of iron pipe. From his look Blaine knew he was a zombie.
“This is my friend,” Smith said. “May I bring him through?”
“You sure he's no inspector?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Wait here,” the Negro said. He disappeared into the passageway.
“Where are we?” Blaine asked.
“Underneath New York, in a series of unused subway tunnels, old sewer conduits, and some passageways we've fashioned for ourselves.”
“But why did we come here?” Blaine asked.
“Where else would we go?” Smith asked, surprised. “This is my home. Didn't you know? You’re in New York's zombie colony.”
Blaine didn't consider a zombie colony much improvement over a ghost; but he didn't have time to think about it. The Negro returned. With him was a very old man who walked with the aid of a stick. The man's face was broken into a network of a thousand lines and wrinkles. His eyes barely showed through the fine scrollwork of sagging flesh, and even his lips were wrinkled.
“This is the man you told me about?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” said Smith. “This is the man. Blaine, let me introduce you to Mr. Kean, the leader of our colony. May I take him through, sir?”
“You may,” the old man said. “And I will accompany you for a while.”
They started down the passageway, Mr. Kean supporting himself heavily on the Negro's arm.
“In the usual course of events,” Mr. Kean said, “only zombies are allowed in the colony. All others are barred. But it has been years since I spoke with a normal, and I thought the experience might be valuable. Therefore, at Smith's earnest request, I made an exception in your case.”
“I'm very grateful,” Blaine said, hoping he had reason to be.
“Don't misunderstand me. I am not averse to helping you. But first and foremost I am responsible for the safety of the eleven hundred zombies living beneath New York. For their sake, normals must be kept out. Exclusivity is our only hope in an ignorant world.” Mr. Kean paused. “But perhaps you can help us, Blaine.”
“How?”
“By listening and understanding, and passing on what you have learned. Education is our only hope. Tell me, what do you know about the problems of a zombie?”
“Very little.”
“I will instruct you. Zombieism, Mr. Blaine, is a disease which has long had a powerful aura of superstition surrounding it, comparable to the aura generated by such diseases as epilepsy, leprosy, or St. Vitus’ Dance. The spiritualizing tendency is a common one. Schizophrenia, you know, was once thought to mean possession by devils, and hydrocephalic idiots were considered peculiarly blessed. Similar fantasies attach to zombieism.”
They walked in silence for a few moments. Mr. Kean said, “The superstition of the zombie is essentially Haitian; the disease of the zombie is worldwide, although rare. But the superstition and the disease have become hopelessly confused in the public mind. The zombie of superstition is an element of the Haitian Vodun cult; a human being whose soul has been stolen by magic. The zombie's body could be used as the magician wished, could even be slaughtered and sold for meat in the marketplace. If the zombie ate salt or beheld the sea, he realized that he was dead and returned to his grave. For all this, there is no basis in fact.
“The superstition arose from the descriptively similar disease. Once it was exceedingly rare. But today, with the increase in mind-switching and reincarnation techniques, zombieism has become more common. The disease of the zombie occurs when a mind occupies a body that has been untenanted too long. Mind and body are not then one, as yours are, Mr. Blaine. They exist, instead, as quasi-independent entities engaged in an uneasy cooperation. Take our friend Smith as typical. He can control his body's gross physical actions, but fine coordination is impossible for him. His voice is incapable of discrete modulation, and his ears do not receive subtle differences in tone. His face is expressionless, for he has little or no control over surface musculature. He drives his body, but is not truly a part of it.”
“And can't anything be done?” Blaine asked.
“At the present time, nothing.”
“I'm very sorry,” Blaine said uncomfortably.
“This is not a plea for your sympathy,” Kean told him. “It is a request only for the most elementary understanding. I simply want you and everyone to know that zombieism is not a visitation of sins, but a disease, like mumps or cancer, and nothing more.”
Mr. Kean leaned against the wall of the passageway to catch his breath. “To be sure, the zombie's appearance is unpleasant. He shambles, his wounds never heal, his body deteriorates rapidly. He mumbles like an idiot, staggers like a drunk, stares like a pervert. But is this any reason to make him the repository of all guilt and shame upon Earth, the leper of the 22nd century? They say that zombies attack people; yet his body is fragile in the extreme, and the average zombie couldn't resist a child's determined assault. They believe the disease is communicable; and this is obviously not so. They say that zombies are sexually perverted, and the truth is that a zombie experiences no sexual feelings whatsoever. But people refuse to learn, and zombies are outcasts fit only for the hangman's noose or the lyncher's burning stake.”