“Better?” he asked.
She waited a moment. Then: “Yes.”
“Good.”
“Let's go.”
“All right, Alicia.”
He woke at the memory of her name. He didn't want to wake up, for he felt that his dream had more reality to it than did Henry Galing's house. Alicia had existed. He'd seen her name on one of those locker doors next to the life support pod chamber on the bottom floor of the building.
An explosion shook the room in which he lay; dust settled down from the stone ceiling. It sifted onto his eyelids and his lips.
He sat up, frightened, his head aching, his heart beating too fast. His mouth was as dry as the dust around him.
Besides him, Allison said: “Another raid.”
“Was I asleep?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I thought the sirens would wake you, but they didn't.”
She was wearing a dark blouse, dark slacks, no shoes. Her clothes were torn, and a spot of blood stained the collar of her blouse.
Suddenly, a chain of explosions shook them, an endless roar of thunder that made conversation impossible for quite some time. Indeed, it was impossible even to think in that holocaust. The room shook; dust fell; he sat hugging his knees beside her. All he could do was look stupidly around the room, which seemed oddly familiar. The walls and ceiling were constructed from huge blocks of stone, hand mortared. In the center of the floor, a drainage grill was half hidden in shadows. Near the heavy oak door, a candle guttered in a baking pan.
When the bombing ceased, Allison came into his arms. “I can't take much more of this.”
“Do you have any sedatives?”
She looked at him strangely. “Any what?”
“Sedatives.”
“No.”
“What happened to them?”
“I–I used them all.”
“I'll ask Henry to prescribe more for you.”
“Henry who?” she asked. She seemed to be genuinely bewildered. He thought, too, that there was a trace of apprehension behind that bewilderment.
“Your uncle,” he said.
“I don't have an uncle.”
“Sure. Henry Galing.” It was quite odd, Allison not remembering her own uncle…
“I really don't have an Uncle Henry.”
“Allison—”
“My name's Alice, not Allison,” she said. Then she sighed and said: “What the hell.” She patted his cheek. “You aren't keyed in to this one at all, are you?”
“Keyed in?” he asked.
“Well try again,” she said.
As if he had been listening on the other side, Richard opened the oak door and came in. He was wearing the hypodermic glove.
“Don't I know you?” Joel asked.
“I'm the sandman,” Richard said, putting Joel to sleep.
After Alicia took her sedative, they left their small apartment on the tenth level and rode the elevator to the top floor. Neither one of them spoke. This wasn't a time for small talk.
From the elevators, they walked down the corridor to the yellow doors, pushed through those, and went to the pressure hatch which led to the view chamber.
CYCLE FOR ADMITTANCE.
Joel did as it said.
WAIT FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
COMPUTER DATA LINKAGES.
WAIT FOR VERIFICATION OF
VIEW CHAMBER'S SANCTITY.
He took her hand.
“I don't want to go in.”
“You have to,” he said.
The light turned green.
LIGHT BURNING.
PROCEED SAFELY ON GREEN.
As he pulled open the door, she began to cry softly. He put his arm around her, although he could not offer her much support. He was every bit as frightened and demoralized as she was. This was one more thing taken from him by the incredible events of the last few years: his man's strength.
They walked reluctantly into the view chamber …
He woke in the pod chamber observation room. He was sitting in a command chair, staring through a porthole at a lazily swimming aquaman.
He turned to Henry Galing who occupied the chair on his right, and he said. “It won't work, you know.”
“The illusion.”
“What illusion?”
“Stop the game.”
Galing frowned, nodded slowly. “Very well. But do you know who you are, who the girl is, the whole story?”
“I'm Joel Amslow.”
“That's just a name.” *
“I know her name's not Allison. It's Alicia. But I won't tell you anything else.”
“Because you don't know anything else,” Galing said, smiling.
“Yes, I do.”
“You're lying.” He turned to someone behind Joel. “He hasn't doped it out yet. We'll have to go on with it.”
“No!” Joel said.
“Yes,” Galing said. “It's what you want me to do, you know. It really is.”
The faceless man loomed at Joel's right side. The needles of the hypodermic glove were icy…
Joel and Alicia crossed the dimly lighted view chamber and stopped before the window.
“Oh…” she said.
They looked out at the gray scene, grayed themselves by its reflection. The view was one of everlasting death, death without equal, death to stagger the mind, death beyond conception, death very nearly beyond endurance, death that was — in its own awful way — full of hideous movement and intelligence.
She shuddered but didn't run. She remained at his side, taking strength from him, unaware that he had gained his strength from her.
The required minutes ticked past…
The overhead speakers crackled and produced a lecture the subject of which was the scene they were required to observe. Each word on the tape had been carefully chosen by the community's psychologists and semanticists; no propaganda had ever been so meticulously constructed. “This,” the speaker said, “is what you have done and what you can never undo, even until the ends of your days.”
Others watched from viewpoints along the thick glass, but no one spoke. The scene was its own comment. It needed no analysis, no interpretation, produced no gossip. The scene was—
The bridal suite had flame red wallpaper and a mirrored ceiling, and it was costing him a hundred bucks a day.
He knew immediately that it was not real. He had not yet been able to break down the wall of amnesia to discover who he was and why he was here, but at least he could no longer be deceived by a lot of fancy props in a hypno-structured illusion. He knew that if he opened the door of the honeymoon suite, he would find Henry Galing's house beyond it, rather than a hotel.
His first impulse was to wake Allison and question her. Even if she called for help, and even if her call were quickly answered, he should be able to force her to tell him…
But that was no good. He would not be able to force her to tell him anything. Even though she had betrayed him, he would not be able to hurt her or even threaten her; he cared for her too much. His love was based on some relationship they had enjoyed when she was called Alicia, back on the other side of the amnesic wall, in those days when he had been totally familiar with the purpose of the pyramid. Now, regardless of her behavior, he knew that she loved him as he did her.