Don’t answer! Don’t listen! Suppress this distraction! This is part of their plan— But it was too late, too late. He felt himself slipping, falling, wrenched from reality back into the fraud world in which they had kept him. It was gone, gone completely, with no single association around him to which to anchor memory. There was nothing left but the sense of heart-breaking loss and the acute ache of unsatisfied catharsis.
"Leave it where it is. I’ll take care of it."
"Okey-doke." The attendant bustled out, slamming the door, and noisily locked it.
He lay quite still for a long time, every nerve end in his body screaming for relief.
At last he got out of bed, still miserably unhappy, and attempted to concentrate on his plans for escape. But the psychic wrench he had received in being recalled so suddenly from his plane of reality had left him bruised and emotionally disturbed. His mind insisted on rechewing its doubts, rather than engage in constructive thought. Was it possible that the doctor was right, that he was not alone in his miserable dilemma? Was he really simply suffering from paranoia, delusions of self- importance?
Could it be that each unit in this yeasty swarm around him was the prison of another lonely ego— helpless, blind, and speechless, condemned to an eternity of miserable loneliness? Was the look of suffering which he had brought to Alice’s face a true reflection of inner torment and not simply a piece of play acting intended to maneuver him into compliance with their plans?
A knock sounded at the door. He said "Come in," without looking up. Their comings and goings did not matter to him.
"Dearest—" A well-known voice spoke slowly and hesitantly.
"Alice!" He was on his feet at once, and facing her. "Who let you in here?"
"Please, dear, please—I had to see you."
"It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair." He spoke more to himself than to her. Then: "Why did you come?"
She stood up to him with a dignity he had hardly expected. The beauty of her childlike face had been marred by line and shadow, but it shone with an unexpected courage. "I love you," she answered quietly. "You can tell me to go away, but you can’t make me stop loving you and trying to help you."
He turned away from her in an agony of indecision. Could it be possible that he had misjudged er? Was there, behind that barrier of flesh and sound symbols, a spirit that truly yearned toward
his? Lovers whispering in the dark— "You do understand, don’t you?"
"Yes, dear heart, I understand."
"Then nothing that happens to us can matter, as long as we are together and understand— " Words, words, rebounding hollowly from an unbroken wall— No, he couldn’t be wrong! Test her again— "Why did you keep me on that job in Omaha?"
"But I didn’t make you keep that job. I simply pointed out that we should think twice before—"
"Never mind. Never mind." Soft hands and a sweet face preventing him with mild stubbornness from ever doing the thing that his heart told him to do. Always with the best of intentions, the best of intentions, but always so that he had never quite managed to do the silly, unreasonable things that he knew were worth while. Hurry, hurry, hurry, and strive, with an angel-faced jockey to see that you don’t stop long enough to think for yourself—
"Why did you try to stop me from going back upstairs that day?"
She managed to smile, although her eyes were already spilling over with tears. "I didn’t know it really mattered to you. I didn’t want us to miss the train."
It had been a small thing, an unimportant thing. For some reason not clear to him he had insisted on going back upstairs to his study when they were about to leave the house for a short vacation. It was raining, and she had pointed out that there was barely enough time to get to the station. He had surprised himself and her, too, by insisting on his own way in circumstances in which he had never been known to be stubborn.
He had actually pushed her to one side and forced his way up the stairs. Even then nothing might have come of it had he not—quite unnecessarily—raised the shade of the window that faced toward the rear of the house.
It was a very small matter. It had been raining, hard, out in front. From this window the weather was clear and sunny, with no sign of rain.
He had stood there quite a long while, gazing out at the impossible sunshine and rearranging his cosmos in his mind. He re-examined long-suppressed doubts in the light, of this one small but totally unexplainable discrepancy. Then he had turned and had found that she was standing behind him.
He had been trying ever since to forget the expression that he had surprised on her face.
"What about the rain?"
"The rain?" she repeated in a small, puzzled voice. "Why, it was raining, of course. What about it?"
"But it was not raining out my study window."
"What? But of course it was. I did notice the sun break through the clouds for a moment, but that was all."
"Nonsense!"
"But darling, what has the weather to do with you and me? What difference does it make whether it rains or not—to us?" She approached him timidly and slid a small hand between his arm and side. "Am I responsible for the weather?"
"I think you are. Now please go."
She withdrew from him, brushed blindly at her eyes, gulped once, then said in a voice held steady: "All right. I’ll go. But remember—you can come home if you want to. And I’ll be there, if you want me." She waited a moment, then added hesitantly: "Would you ... would you kiss me good-bye?"
He made no answer of any sort, neither with voice nor eyes. She looked at him, then turned, fumbled blindly for the door, and rushed through it.
The creature he knew as Alice went to the place of assembly without stopping to change form. "It s necessary to adjourn this sequence. I am no longer able to influence his decisions."
They had expected it, nevertheless they stirred with dismay.
The Glaroon addressed the First for Manipulation. "Prepare to graft the selected memory track at once."
Then, turning to the First for Operations, the Glaroon said: "The extrapolation shows that he will tend to escape within two of his days. This sequence degenerated primarily through your failure to extend that rainfall all around him. Be advised."
"It would be simpler if we understood his motives."
"In my capacity as Dr. Hayward, I have often thought so," commented the Glaroon acidly, "but if we understood his motives, we would be part of him. Bear in mind the Treaty! He almost remembered."
The creature known as Alice spoke up. "Could he not have the Taj Mahal next sequence? For some reason he values it."
"You are becoming assimilated!"
"Perhaps. I am not in fear. Will he receive it?"
"It will be considered."
The Glaroon continued with orders: "Leave structures standing until adjournment. New York City and Harvard University are now dismantled. Divert him from those sectors.
"Move!"
OUR FAIR CITY
Pete Perkins turned into the all-nite parking lot and called out, "Hi, Pappy!"
The old parking lot attendant looked up and answered, "Be with you in a moment, Pete." He was tearing a Sunday comic sheet in narrow strips. A little whirlwind waltzed near him, picking up pieces of old newspaper and bits of dirt and flinging them in the faces of passing pedestrians. The old man held out to it a long streamer of the brightly colored funny-paper. "Here, Kitten," he coaxed. "Come, Kitten—"
The whirlwind hesitated, then drew itself up until it was quite tall, jumped two parked cars, and landed sur le point near him.
It seemed to sniff at the offering.
"Take it, Kitten," the old man called softly and let the gay streamer slip from his fingers. The whirlwind whipped it up and wound it around its middle. He tore off another and yet another; the whirlwind wound them in corkscrew through the loose mass of dirty paper and trash that constituted its visible body. Renewed by cold gusts that poured down the canyon of tall buildings, it swirled faster and even taller, while it lifted the colored paper ribbons in a fantastic upswept hair-do. The old man turned, smiling. "Kitten does like new clothes."