And then?
As he watched the fungoid towers which seemed to have moved a bit on the plain before him, he strained to recall the rest of it… Next had come Disorientation Therapy, a drastic form of psychiatry popular in the decade before the worst of the ecological changes. He knew it was his best chance. He and the androids had stripped the pyramid of every clue to its real purpose, stored these records in hidden vaults, and structured a Disorientation Therapy Puzzle from the entire installation. As he saw it: he would be given a temporary chemical amnesia, would be placed in his pod and, when revived, would find himself in a maze of deception and illusion: fake streets, the dungeon, the house… And in this weird play, Allison would be his only touchstone to reality as he struggled to solve the problem and reorient himself. With any luck he would come to need her and care for her so much, in his disorientation, that his guilt and prejudice would be easily defeated.
It had worked. He had slept with her and he wanted to sleep with her again. He had even thought of having a family by her, if that were possible. And he felt no guilt. He was cured.
Then why did he feel that something was terribly, dangerously wrong?
He looked at Allison. She was mumbling continuously now, smiling in her sleep, slowly coming out of the drug.
Where was the danger he sensed, if indeed there were any?
Not Allison.
Something else…
“Joel! Joel Amslow!”
He recoiled as Henry Galing's authoritative voice boomed out of the radio receiver in the center of the tank's main control panel.
“Joel! Please answer me.”
He flicked a switch permitting two-way conversation, and he said “I'm here.”
“You're all right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where you are?” Galing asked. He no longer sounded sinister. He was worried.
“Outside the Utah fortress,” Joel said.
“You understand the illusions?”
“Too well.”
“This wasn't in the program,” Galing said worriedly. You weren't supposed to act like this.” He paused to get a grip on himself. “You are safe, you said?”
“Sure.”
“You better come inside.”
“The therapy was a success,” Joel said. He caressed Allison's face again.
“Oh?” Galing said cautiously.
Joel sighed and leaned back in the safety harness. He was so weary. The dead world, the rotting sky, the barren land that fell away in every direction — all this made him feel old and worn out. It was this weariness, he now thought, that made him feel there was yet another danger; his nerves were frayed, playing tricks on him. He gazed fondly at the woman on the seat beside him. “Very successful therapy,” he told Galing. “I don't feel the way I used to… You people may be vat-born, formed as complete adults… But you've each got a distinct personality. You're as human as I am. I mean it. I no longer have to be alone.”
“I'm glad to hear it,” Galing said. “But that's only half of it. Apparently, you don't know anything about what the Overmaster did to you.”
“What?”
“The Overmaster's relentless,” Galing said. “It won't give up and go away. We came damned close to being destroyed, the pyramid breached and ruined—”
“Overmaster? I'm not tracking very—”
The earth rumbled beneath the tank, trembled gently at first and then more violently, lifted up, tilted, slammed down again, and nearly overturned the elephantine vehicle.
“Joel? Is something wrong out there?”
The earth rose again. Fell again. Harder this time.
“Joel?”
“Something—”
Again the movement came, as if a bomb had exploded underneath the tank.
Joel looked up, startled, as he was thrown forward and then jerked back by his safety harness. He saw the towering fungoid forms. Very near. Too damned near. They'd moved in on him… Now, they rose above the tank like the many fingers of an alien hand, reaching down to crush him.
XXIV
Illusion?
He had been through so many illusions in the last few days that he could not help but doubt the reality of what he saw before him. Surely it was another of Galing's programs, no more real than the dungeon or the honeymoon suite. This was a fungus, nothing more than that, plant life. It could not possess the quick mobility of an animal!
The fungus flowed toward the tank in a many-fingered amoeboid mass. As it came nearer, it rose higher and higher until it seemed that the tips of those fingers must brush the polluted sky. A thin yellowish fluid oozed from it continually and sheeted down the columns of muck, was reabsorbed by the mother body before it spilled onto the ground. The hideous creature writhed and pulsed, roiled and churned within itself. It was gray the color of dead flesh and brown the color of feces. Pustules as large as basketballs punctuated it, split open and issued a disgusting, syrupy ichor.
Beneath the tank, the wriggling carpet of moss surged up for the fourth time, shook, tilted, fell back, rocking them violently from side to side.
“Joel! Galing said.
“We're under attack,” he said.
“We'll be out to help.”
“No! Stay there.”
“But—”
“You can't do anything. It's too damned big. It's the whole world!”
This was no Disorientation Therapy Puzzle, no clever illusion; this, by God, was real!
Joel touched the solid-state control spot label reverse and felt the machine change gears smoothly. He gripped the wheel with both sweat-slicked hands and, as the tread churned backwards, he turned the tank to the right as hard and fast as he could.
“Move, you big bastard!” he said, pulling harder than he had to pull, as if he could muscle it around faster than it would go on its own.
He had to get out from under the falling wave of amorphous fungus, had to get back to the tunnel that led into the subterranean pyramid from which they had “escaped” only minutes ago. This was no time to kid himself; if he didn't get into the pyramid, he and Allison were dead. Even in the tank they couldn't stand for long against the fungus.
One finger of the glistening, wet mass of vegetable matter fell noiselessly across the place where the tank had been only a moment ago. It curled back, bunched up on itself, was absorbed into the mother body. The rest of the creature, an endless hulking thing, came closer, forming a new finger to replace the old one.
Joel completed the turn and put the machine in top gear, stood on the wide accelerator plate and jammed it all the way down to the floorboards. The tank lurched, whined, and surged forward. “Come on baby,” he said, as if it could hear him. “Move your big steel ass!”
A mammoth pseudopod of fungus fell on his right, a ridge of muck that must have weighed thousands upon thousands of tons. It oozed towards him, and the tip of it curled out in front of the tank, blocking his escape route.
“Damn!”
He wheeled to the left.
Another pseudopod fell on that side. It was at least twenty feet high, glimmering with yellow fluid, pustules bursting as it pressed itself in his direction.
“Pincered,” he said.
He hit the brake pedal, brought the tank to a full stop. He could not go forward or backward or to either side without encountering the fungus.
“Whatever the hell you are,” he said as he watched it move in on him, “you're more than a little bit intelligent. Or you've got damned good instincts.”