“Dreamhouse, I think,” said Chanthavar, leading them out. “It’s a favorite resort for all levels.”
The entrance was a cloudy blueness opening into many small rooms. They took one, slipping life-masks over their faces: living synthetic flesh which stung briefly as it connected to nerve endings in the skin and then was part of you. “Everybody’s equal here, everybody anonymous,” said Chanthavar. “Refreshing.”
“What is your wish, sirs?” The voice came from nowhere, cool and somehow not human.
“General tour,” said Chanthavar. “The usual. Here... put a hundred solars in this slot, each of you. The place is expensive, but fun.”
They relaxed on what seemed a dry, fluffy cloud, and were carried aloft. The guards formed an impassive huddle some distance behind. Doors opened for them. They hung under a perfumed sky of surrealistic stars and moons, looking down on what appeared to be a deserted landscape not of Earth.
“Part illusion, part real,” said Chanthavar. “You can have any experience you can imagine here, for the right price. Look—”
The cloud drifted through a rain which was blue and red and golden fire, tingling as it licked over their bodies. Great triumphant chords of music welled around them. Through the whirling flames, Langley glimpsed girls of an impossible loveliness, dancing on the air.
Then they were underwater, or so it seemed, with tropical fish swimming through a green translucence, corals and waving fronds underneath. Then they were in a red-lit cavern, where the music was a hot pulse in the blood and they shot at darting containers which landed to offer a drink when hit. Then they were in a huge and jolly company of people, singing and laughing and dancing and guzzling. A pneumatic young female giggled and tugged at Langley’s arm—briefly, he wavered, there must be some drug in the air, then he said harshly: “Scram!”
Whirled over a roaring waterfall, sporting through air which was somehow thick enough to swim in, gliding past grottoes and glens full of strange lights, and on into a gray swirling mist where you could not see a yard ahead. Here, in a dripping damp quiet which seemed to mask enormousness, they paused.
Chanthavar’s shadowy form gestured, and there was a queer taut note in his muffled voice: “Would you like to play Creator? Let me show you—” A ball of raging flame was in his hands, and from it he molded stars and strewed them through sightless immensity. “Suns, planets, moons, people, civilization, and histories—you can make them here as you please.” Two stars crashed into each other. “You can will yourself to see a world grow, any detail no matter how tiny, a million years in a minute or a minute stretched through a million years; you can smite it with thunder, and watch them cower and worship you.” The sun in Chanthavar’s hands glowed dully through the fog. Tiny sparks which were planets flitted around it. “Let me clear the mist, let there be light. Let there be Life and a History!”
Something moved in the wet smoky air. Langley saw a shadow striding between new-born constellations, a thousand light-years tall. A hand gripped his arm, and dimly he saw the pseudo-face beyond.
He writhed free, yelling, as the other hand sought his neck. A wire loop snaked out, tangling his ankles. There were two men now, closing in on him. Wildly, he groped backward. His fist connected with a cheek which bled artificial blood.
“Chanthavar!”
A blaster crashed, startlingly loud and brilliant. Langley hurled a giant red sun into one of the faces wavering near him. Twisting free of an arm about his waist, he kneed the vague form and heard a grunt of pain.
“Light!” bellowed Chanthavar. “Get rid of this mist!”
The fog broke, slowly and raggedly. There was a deep clear blackness, the dark of outer vacuum, with stars swimming in it like fireflies. Then full illumination came on.
A man sprawled dead near Chanthavar, his stomach torn open by an energy bolt. The guards milled uneasily. Otherwise they were alone. The room was bare, coldly lit, Langley thought somewhere in his lurching mind that it was cruel to show the emptiness here where there had been dreams.
For a long moment, he and the agent stared at each other. Blaustein and Matsumoto were gone.
“Is... this... part of the fun?” asked Langley through his teeth.
“No.” A hunter’s light flickered in Chanthavar’s eyes. He laughed. “Beautiful job! I’d like to have those fellows on my staff. Your friends have been stunned and kidnapped under my own eyes. Come on!”
7
There was a time of roaring confusion, as Chanthavar snapped orders into a visiphone, organizing a chase. Then he swung around to Langley. “I’ll have this warren searched, of course,” he said, “but I don’t imagine the kidnappers are still in it. The robots aren’t set to notice who goes out in what condition, so that’s no help. Nor do I expect to find the employee of this place who helped fix matters up for the snatch. But I’ve got the organization alerted, there’ll be a major investigation hereabouts inside half an hour. And Brannoch’s quarters are being watched already.”
“Brannoch?” repeated Langley stupidly. His brain felt remote, like a stranger’s, he couldn’t throw off the air-borne drugs as fast as the agent.
“To be sure! Who else? Never thought he had this efficient a gang on Earth, but- They won’t take your friends directly to him, of course, there’ll be a hideout somewhere in the lower levels, not too much chance of finding it among fifteen million Commoners, but we’ll try. We’ll try!”
A policeman hurried up with a small, metal-cased object which Chanthavar took. “Peel off that mask. This is an electronic scent-tracer, we’ll try to follow the trail of the pseudo-faces—distinctive odor, so don’t you confuse it. I don’t think the kidnappers took the masks off in Dreamhouse, then someone might notice who they were carrying. Stick with us, we may need you. Let’s go!”
A score of men, black-clad, armed, and silent, surrounded them. Chanthavar cast about the main exit. There was something of the questing hound over him—the aesthete, the hedonist, the casual philosopher, were blotted up in the hunter of men. A light glowed on the machine. “A trail, all right,” he muttered. “If only it doesn’t get cold too fast-Damn it, why must they ventilate the lowers so well?” He set off at a rapid jog trot, his men keeping an easy pace. The milling crowds shrank away.
Langley was too bewildered to think. This was happening faster than he could follow, and the drugs of Dreamhouse were still in his blood, making the world unreal. Bob, Jim, now the great darkness had snatched them too, and would he ever see them again?
Why?
Down a drop-shaft, falling like autumn leaves, Chanthavar testing each exit as he passed it. The unceasing roar of machines grew louder, more frantic. Langley shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to master himself. It was like a dream, he was carried wildlessly along between phantoms in black, and—
He had to get away. He had to get off by himself, think in peace; it was an obsession now, driving everything else out of his head, he was in a nightmare and he wanted to wake up. Sweat was clammy on his skin.
The light flashed, feebly. “This way!” Chanthavar swung out of a portal. “Trail’s weakening, but maybe—”
The guards pressed after him. Langley hung back, dropped farther, and stepped out at the next level down.
It was an evil section, dim-lit and dingy, the streets almost deserted. Closed doors lined the walls, litter blew about under his feet, the stamping and grinding of machines filled his universe. He walked fast, turning several corners, trying to hide.
Slowly, his brain cleared. An old man in dirty garments sat cross-legged beside a door, watching him out of filmy eyes. A small group of grimed children played some game under the white glare of a fluorolamp in the street ceiling. A sleazy woman slunk close to him, flashing bad teeth in a mechanical smile, and fell behind. A tall young man, ragged and unshaven, leaned against the wall and followed his movements with listless eyes. This was the slum, the oldest section, poor and neglected, last refuge of failure; this was where those whom the fierce life of the upper tiers had broken fled, to drag out lives of no importance to the Technon. Under the noise of mills and furnaces, it was very quiet.