He lay in bed pretending to be asleep, waiting. Every so often he heard a shuffling and one of the Pauls came to the door, peered in, eyes blurry, then shuffled away. He let that happen six times and then the seventh time got up just after the Paul had left and began to search the room.
The top drawer of a mahogany tallboy contained a neat stack of undershirts and an even neater stack of boxers and a robe. He awkwardly struggled out of his gown, stump throbbing, and into an undershirt. The boxers he spread out on the floor and then stepped into the leg-holes, pulling them up around his hips with his single hand. They were a little big but would do. He slipped the robe on.
He tried the other drawers of the tallboy, found them all empty. He searched around the room for a pair of pants, finding nothing of note except, beneath the bathroom sink, a barrage of cleaning supplies and, wrapped in an old towel, a bedpan. This latter he took out and hefted. It was a little awkward but then he realized he could slip his hand into it and make a fist and it would stay in place when he swung it back and forth.
When a Paul came to the door for the eighth time and saw the bed empty, he took a step forward and was struck in the face by a bedpan. It hurt Kline's hand quite a bit, but seemed to hurt the Paul a great deal more. The Paul stumbled and started to go down and then began to catch himself, groping at one of his pockets with his stump. Kline hit him again, on the side of the head this time, and he went down for good.
Kline worked his hand out of the bedpan and let it drop and then started to slip the Paul's pants off. There was blood coming out of the Paul's mouth, he realized, and he opened his mouth to see the Paul had bitten through his tongue. He turned the head a little so as to keep him from choking to death on his own blood, then fished the severed tip out of the mouth and laid it on the carpet beside his head.
Like a slug, he thought, working the Paul's pants the rest of the way off. There was nothing in the pants pockets. He took off his robe and tried the pants on and they didn't fit, they were too tight, so he stepped out of them and put the robe back on.
He imagined the other Pauls coming in to find this Paul unconscious, his severed tongue arranged neatly beside him. And then he realized, his body instantly feeling heavier, they would see the tongue and then do one of two things. Either they would all cut off their own tongues, making all the Pauls identical again, or they would make a holy relic of this tongue.
He picked the tongue up, carried it into the bathroom, and flushed it down the toilet.
He moved down a dim hall, past first one open doorway and then a second, each opening onto rooms that, as far as he could tell in the dim light, were like his own. The hall turned abruptly to the right and then terminated in a T-intersection. He turned right, went past another doorway and into growing darkness. When it became too difficult to see, he stopped and traced his steps back, taking the left fork.
He followed this down to another T-intersection, then followed the right branch, where there seemed to be more light, and came to a heavy banister and a spiral staircase. The light was coming from below. He leaned over the banister and saw, standing perhaps fifteen feet below, a Paul.
He started down the stairs, moving slowly, watching the Paul. The man just stood there, wearing a light jacket, arms crossed, facing a larger door. Kline went silently around another turn of the stairs and then leaned far over the banister and struck the Paul hard over the head with the bedpan.
The Paul took a step and then sat down, the back of his head slowly darkening with blood. Then he slumped over bonelessly.
Kline came down the rest of the way and searched the Paul's pockets. The pocket of his jacket had a gun in it and a ten-dollar bill and a car key on a rubber band.
Kline took everything, then started for the door. It was locked.
He looked at the key again, even tried it but, no, he knew it was a car key not a door key: it didn't fit. When he turned around to try to figure out what to do next, there was the chief Paul sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, watching him.
"Anything the matter?" the Paul asked.
Kline lifted the pistol, pointed it at him.
"Friend Kline," the Paul said. "You sadden me."
"Where's the key to the door?" demanded Kline.
"Nobody here has the key, friend Kline," said the Paul. He spread his arms, displayed his stump and an open palm. "There's no need for any of this."
"How do you get out if there's no key?"
"I don't want to get out," said the Paul. "Paul is perfectly happy where he is." He pointed at the gun with his stump. "No need for that," he said. "Please, put it away."
Kline looked at the gun, then shrugged, let it slowly fall to his side.
"All right," he said.
"There," said the Paul. "Don't you feel much better now that we can talk this over like civilized adults?"
"I want to leave," said Kline.
"If you really wanted to leave, all you had to do was ask," said the Paul. He stood and came slowly toward Kline, then moved past him and to the door. "Ask and ye shall receive," he said, "knock and it shall be opened unto you." He knocked twice, waited, then knocked a third time.
"What is wanted?" asked a muffled voice from the other side.
"Kline, having been true and faithful in all things, desires to turn his face away from the Lord by entering the lone and dreary world."
"Present him at the door and his request shall be granted," said the voice.
The Paul motioned him forward, positioned him in front of the door. He knocked once, then waited, then knocked twice more.
There was a rustling on the other side and the lock clicked. The door opened and Kline found himself looking into what appeared to be an empty building lobby, brightly lit. A revolving door on the far side opened onto a dark street. Beside it stood a Paul wearing a doorman's uniform.
"You see, friend Kline? We're men of our word. You're free to go."
Kline nodded, stopped forward and past the doorman.
"You took Paul's key, friend Kline, and his gun," said the chief Paul from behind. "There was no need to knock him out."
"I'm sorry," said Kline warily, holding out the key.
"No, no," said the chief Paul, waving his stump. "You might as well keep it. Paul's car is parked just outside, isn't it Paul?" he said, looking at the doorman. The doorman nodded. "It's a mistake to leave," said the chief Paul. "They'll kill you," he said. "But we all of us have to make our own mistakes. We all of us have free agency, friend Kline. But far be it from me to force a man to go on foot to his own death. By all means, take the car."
"Thank you," said Kline.
"You sure you won't reconsider?" asked the Paul.
Kline shook his head and moved through the door.
"A pity, friend Kline," he heard from behind him. "I was certain you were the one."
He tried the key in three car doors before it opened the door of a rusted, lime-green Ford Pinto. He climbed in, only now starting to feel how exhausted he was.
He cursed when he realized the car was a standard. He started it in neutral and then shifted it into first, slowly working the steering wheel around with his solitary hand until the wheels jacked sharply out. He could feel pressure in his clutch foot, the toes reminding him of their absence. Not pain exactly, though there was pain too, in his armless shoulder as he moved his other arm. He let out the clutch and the car lurched out, just nicking the bumper of the car ahead of him but scraping past. And then he had his hands, or rather his hand, full trying to correct before plowing into the cars on the other side of the street.