He stepped from the sill to the chair, from the chair to the floor. “Your turn,” he said.
“What?”
“Up on the chair.”
“Why?” She stared at him as if he were stark raving mad.
“You'll see in a minute,” he said.
“Joel, I'm nude.”
“No one will see you.”
“I am not going to—”
He encircled her waist with his big hands and lifted her onto the chair. “Up you go,” he said.
“Joel—”
“Quickly, now.”
Reluctantly, she balanced on the window sill.
He climbed onto the chair and held her as she leaned out and raised a hand toward the sky. “Now what?” she asked.
“Stretch a bit.”
She did, and squealed. “I can touch the stars,” she said. “Joel, look!”
When she held her hand against the ceiling, a star was projected on the back of it.
He helped her back inside. “Now do you see?”
“The sky isn't real!”
“Neither is much else.”
“But it isn't possible—”
“Believe me, love, it is possible. Anything's possible in the Henry Gating Theater.”
“The what?”
“We haven't time to talk about it now.” He turned her around, put one hand against her sleek back, and gently propelled her toward the closet. “Gating might be back at any moment.”
She stopped in front of the closet and hugged herself. “You make him sound like a desperado or something.”
“Something,” Joel said.
“He's just my uncle.”
“He's not your uncle,” Joel said. He closed the window. “That's just another part of his act. Now, you better get dressed. We've got to be going. Time's running out.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Out of the pyramid.”
“None of this is making sense.”
“You felt the sky,” he said. “You know I'm not mad.”
She nodded. “I'll be just a second.”
He stood at the side of the window and watched the lawn as she dressed. There was no movement on it — nor any down by the dark trees. Maybe they'd make it. Just maybe…
“I'm ready,” she said.
He turned around.
She was wearing white slacks, a black blouse, and one leather glove. She raised her right hand and showed him the palm full of tiny hypodermic needles which glittered in the moonlight. “I'm so sorry, darling. I really am.”
“Allison—”
She reached for him.
He backed into the wall.
She touched him firmly on the neck.
“Not you!” he said.
But it was too late. He slid down the wall and rolled on his back at her feet.
XX
After that, it got worse.
He was subjected to a series of illusions more detailed than the first ones had been — although each fell apart faster than the one before it had done.
And now the periods of unconsciousness between the illusions were filled with dreams. The same dream. Over and over again, like a film loop. Each time, he woke before the dream was finished, but each time it progressed farther than it had previously. He was aware that there was some meaning in the dream, some solution to the mystery, and he almost welcomed the darkness between illusions, when he could continue with it.
Strangely, Galing, Richard, Gina, and the faceless man rarely made appearances in these new illusions. They left the whole act to Allison. Always, he started out with a deep affection for the woman, a need and desire to please that went beyond mere love. Always, however, he began to see that he was in another program; he remembered that she had betrayed him and could not be trusted. Always, he remained calm, not angered by her treachery, only saddened by it. And, always, she seemed as distraught as he, eager to have done with this impossible shifting world, this kaleidoscope of realities that formed one colorful pattern after another, as if it were all controlled by a child's whim.
He realized that his continuing love for her could only be sustained if he had enjoyed a long and close relationship with her in the distant past, before he had climbed out of that life support pod. He no longer trusted her. But he loved her, because he had been able to trust her in some other age.
Never, oddly enough, was she named Allison in these new illusions, although she was always the same woman in every particular, even down to the style of her clothes and the way she wore her lustrous black hair.
And the illusions came, kaleidoscopic:
“Well,” she said, leaning over him, her bare breasts tickling his chest, “I'm glad to see you're awake.”
He yawned and sat up, looked around the bridal suite which was costing him a hundred bucks a day. From the flame red wallpaper to the decadently mirrored ceiling it was meant to stir passions. And it stirred his now. He reached for her and pulled her down on top of him.
“Satyr,” she said.
“You know it.”
“Cool yourself, satyr. Breakfast has been sent up. We don't want the eggs to get cold.”
“Better the eggs than me.”
She laughed.
“Beautiful laugh,” he said.
An hour later they had breakfast.
The dawdled over each other throughout the long afternoon, talked very little, made slow and leisurely love. They moved well together, denying themselves completion until completion came in spite of their denials. And the day passed.
When Joel came out of the shower just after sunset and saw that dinner had been delivered while he was bathing, he reached for the room service phone, picked it up, waited for an answer.
Annie was suddenly frightened. “What do you want? We have everything we could need.”
Why was she so anxious on their honeymoon? What was she abruptly frightened about?
“May I help you?” asked a voice on the other end of the line.
Now ill-at-ease himself, he ordered a bottle of wine. Though he could not place it, the telephone voice was unpleasantly familiar. When the bellboy came, Joel had no trouble recognizing the source of his own uneasiness.
“Richard,” he said.
“Relax,” Annie-Allison said.
Richard hadn't brought any wine. He was wearing the hypodermic glove.
“You'll only be put to sleep for a short time, darling.”
“Stay away from me.”
They moved in on him.
“Who are you people?”
“Trust us,” Richard said.
“Relax,” the woman said.
He struck out at Richard. The blow connected — but so did the hypodermic glove.
“Please…” Joel said, slipping into the old dream again, that same dream:
He stood at the doorway of a private bath cubicle on the tenth level of the pyramid. The bath was white and yellow tile, mirrors, a shower stall, commode, and disposal pipe built into the wall. The only person in the cubicle was a raven-haired girl. She was squeezing a blue tablet from a plastic medicine coil. Her hands were trembling, and she was flushed.
“Do you really need that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I wish you wouldn't use it.”
She had it free now.
“If you do all your view duties sedated, you'll need two or three times as many tours to satisfy the psychologists.”
“I don't care.” Even now, her face drawn with fear, she was a stunningly beautiful woman. “I'd simply fall apart if I tried it unsedated.” She swallowed the pill.
He loved her so damned much, and he wished that there were something more for her than this dying world of theirs. A man — or woman, for she surely felt as he did — should be able to give his lover a future. He felt robbed by circumstances, cheated by fate. He was dying inside.