He didn't trust the elevator, but he had no choice but to consign himself to it. He stepped inside, pushed the button for the second level. The doors closed with less noise than had accompanied their opening, and he was carried swiftly, smoothly upwards.
The second level was larger than the first and composed strictly of laboratories and chemical storage closets. Again, he found no windows or doors to the outside world. All the file cabinets and records drawers had been emptied; he could not find a trace of their contents. Though he recognized the purpose and nature of some of the machinery and furniture — slate-topped lab tables, racks of Pyrex beakers, rusted Bunsen burners, a Lexical-7 computer for chemical analysis, acid-resistant porcelain sinks — he could not deduce from all of it what might have been done here.
On the third floor — which was larger than the second, as if the building were an inverted pyramid — half the space was given over to storage, half to offices. No scrap of paper remained, no mark of individual presence. Even if they had not left in a hurry, the residents and workers would surely have overlooked some minim of written material from which he could have ascertained the nature of their business. This complete sweep of the building indicated a cautious withdrawal, as if they had known some hated antagonist was soon to come into possession of the place, as if they didn't wish to leave behind anything of value beyond the structure itself.
Was a war in progress?
That seemed unlikely. What had happened to the conquering horde before which the original owners might have fled? Once the building had been evacuated, no one had come to claim it.
Besides, if war were the reason for abandonment, why leave the men and women in the pods? After all, the cylinders and the sleepers seemed to be the central reason for the entire project.
Still searching for an answer with which he could live, Joel came to the last office on that level— where he finally uncovered a trace of the people who had worked here. Another corpse.
It was the skeleton of a large man, slumped across the desk in a posture of defeat which it had held for many years. In the open air the worms had made swift work of it; it contained not a scrap of leathery flesh. The skeleton was white and clean and looked as if it had been scrubbed with sand and water. It had no hair. The few tattered garments it wore were so rotten that they crumbled into ashes when he touched them.
Joel carefully pulled the skeleton away from the desk and let it slide back in the swivel chair. Finger bones rattled together like dry sticks of kindling.
He opened all the drawers in the desk, hoping to find something, anything, even the last words of a man long dead. But the drawers contained only dust.
When he turned away from the desk, the skeleton appeared to be glaring at him. Its gleaming skull was thrust forward, shoulders hunched, as if it were ready to launch itself at him.
He swung it around until it faced the wall. It stared at the plaster with the same intensity which it had focused on him a moment earlier. Perhaps its gaze wasn't one of malevolent intent, but a longing for the sarcophagus where it might rest after so many years of sitting in a chair.
When he continued his search, safe from fossilized observation, he met with more disappointment. The four-drawer file cabinet was locked, raising hope that something worthwhile was protected within. But when he used a heavy, rust-filmed letter opener to snap the main latch, he found all four drawers empty. The supplies closet held no supplies.
As he closed the closet door a cold finger tapped his shoulder as if testing his solidity. For an instant he was certain that the skeleton was touching him. However, when he leaped sideways and turned on it, he found that it was worse than that, worse than the skeleton.
He backed up, bumped into the file cabinet, and realized that he was trapped.
“Stay back,” he said.
The creature which had come up behind him now took another step in his direction, raising its pale right hand. It had no face. Where its features should have been, there was only a smooth, plastic sheen of flesh. No eyes. No nose. No mouth. No hair on the bright, shiny head.
It reached for him.
“No!”
It touched him with fingers so cold they stung his wrist and sent shivers through him.
Joel drew back.
The faceless man followed him.
He swayed as his strength seemed to drain out of him. He sank to his knees, gasping for breath, sweating… He watched the floor circle round like an opponent waiting for a chance to jump him, bear him down, and finish him. What was happening here? What had this thing done to him? With his last bit of strength, he raised his head and looked at the faceless man.
Noseless, eyeless, mouthless, terrifying, the creature slowly tilted its barren face towards his, as if it were returning his gaze.
What have you done to me? he wanted to ask.
He couldn't speak.
Darkness swooped down like a huge bird. Wings enfolded him: pinions, feathers, spiny ribs… Dizzy, he pitched forward, out cold. He was unaware that the icy fingers touched him again, exploring him more fully this time, taking his pulse and thumbing back his eyelids to see if he were genuinely unconscious.
III
Joel lifted a lead blanket and rose out of a bed of molasses, shook off the covers of darkness and came dizzily awake. In the first flush of sensation, as he waited for the whirling to subside, he did not remember the faceless man. When the memory returned, it was like a punch just below the heart, and it stopped his breathing for a long moment.
He could hear voices, but he didn't want to open his eyes to see who was speaking. He didn't want to discover that it was the man without a face, for then he'd have to wonder how the thing could speak when it had no mouth. Curiosity like that could lead only to madness.
He contented himself with listening, and he discovered that the voices were in another room, distant enough to be meaningless. He opened his eyes then. He was lying in a huge bed in a darkened room.
The voices stopped abruptly, as if the speakers knew he was finally awake.
A door slammed somewhere in the house. Footsteps. Creaking floorboards. Another door, closer at hand this time, opened and closed more quietly than the first. Like evenly spaced sighs, soft footsteps sounded on the carpet. He had closed his eyes again, but he felt the light the visitor had switched on. Someone loomed over him, casting a shadow across his face. A hand touched his forehead. It was a warm small hand, a woman's hand.
Joel opened his eyes again and stared straight into her eyes which were blue and quite large, one of them partially covered by the thick fall of her black hair. She had a pug nose, full lips, and a creamy expression. She wasn't beautiful. She was better than that: cute and saucy. The left corner of her mouth had an insouciant twist; her blue eyes were merry. He wanted to reach up and embrace her and pull her down and kiss her. At least.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
He nodded when he found his mouth was too dry for him to speak.
Her face showed deep concern. “Does your head hurt?”
“No.” He wheezed like a punctured bellows when he spoke.
“You're sure.”
“Sure.”
“The doctor's been here and gone already.” She used both her hands to caress his face. Her fingertips pressed gently against his chapped lips. Obviously, there was an intimacy between them of which he was ignorant. Hell, he didn't even know who she was.