His footsteps rang like hollow drumbeats on the pavement as he walked slowly down the street. The houses mostly were dark, with only here and there a lighted window. There appeared to be no one else abroad.
No one else abroad, he thought, because there was no reason to go anywhere. No cafes, no plays, no concerts— for all of these took money. And if one were to prepare for that second life, he must hold tight to all his money.
A drab, deserted street and a drab and empty room — was this all that the present life could offer to a man? Could he have been wrong? he wondered. Could he have been walking in a dream, blinded by the glory of the life to come?
All alone, he thought—alone in life and alone upon the street.
Then a man stepped out of a recessed doorway. "Mr. Frost?" he asked. "Yes," said Frost. "What can I do for you?" There was something about the man that he didn't care for, a faint hint of impertinence, a sense of insolence in the way he spoke.
The man moved a step or two closer, but said nothing. "If you don't mind," said Frost, "I have…" Something stung him in the back of the neck, a vicious, painful sting. He lifted a hand to smite at whatever might have stung him, but his hand was heavy, and half lifted, it would lift no further. He seemed to be falling, over on one side, in a slow, deliberate fall, not from any blow, not from any violence, but as if he'd tried to lean against something that had not been there. And the curious thing about it was that he didn't seem to care, for he knew that he was falling so slowly he'd not be hurt when he struck the sidewalk.
The man who had spoken to him still was standing. on the sidewalk, and now there was another man as well, someone, Frost realized, who had come up behind him. But they were faceless men, enshrouded in the shadow of the buildings and they were no one that he knew.
17
He was in a dark place and he seemed to be silting in a chair and in the darkness of the place a light he could not see shone on the metallic structure of a strange machine.
He was comfortable and drowsy and he felt no desire to move, although it bothered him that he did not recognize the place. It was somewhere, he was certain, he had never been before.
He closed his eyes again and sat there, the hardness of the chair beneath him, across his back and seat, and the hardness of the floor underneath his feet the one reality. He listened and there seemed to be a sort of humming, an almost silent hum, the sort of noise that an idle piece of equipment might make while it waited for a task to be assigned to it.
There was a burning on each cheek and a burning on his forehead, a tingling sensation with a little fire ir it and he wondered what had happened and where he was and how he'd gotten there, but he was so comfortable, so very close to sleep, that he didn't really mind
He sat quietly and now it seemed that in addition to the machinelike hum, he could hear the ticking oi time as it went flowing past him. Not the ticking of a clock, for there was no sound of a clock, but the tick of time itself. And that was strange, he thought, for time should have no sound.
Embarrassed by the thought of the tick of time, he stirred a little in the chair and lifted a hand to feel the tingle in his cheek.
"Your Honor," said a voice out of the darkness all around him, "the defendant is awake."
Frost's eyes came open and he struggled to get out of the chair. But his legs seemed to have no power in them and his arms were rubbery and all he really wanted was to stay sitting in the chair.
But the man had said Your Honor and something about a defendant now awake and that was startling enough to make him want to find out where he was.
Another voice asked, "Can he stand?"
"It appears he can't, Your Honor."
"Well," His Honor said, "it doesn't matter much, one way or the other.
Frost managed to hitch around so he was sitting side-wise in the chair and now he saw the light, a little shielded light, on a level somewhat above his head, and just above the light, half in shadow, half in light, hung a ghostly face.
"Daniel Frost," asked the ghostly face, "can you see me?"
"Yes, I can," said Frost.
"Can you hear and understand me?"
"I don't know," said Frost. "It seems I just woke up and I can't get out of the chair…"
"You talk too much," said the other voice in the room.
"Leave him be," said the ghostly face. "Give him a little time. This must be a shock to him."
Frost sat limply in the chair and the others waited.
He had been walking on a street, it seemed, when a man had stepped from a doorway and had spoken to him. Then something stung his neck and he'd tried to reach the thing that stung him, but he couldn't reach it. And then he had fallen very slowly, although he could not remember that he'd ever hit the street, and there had been two men, not one, standing on the sidewalk, watching as he fell.
Your Honor, the other man had said, and that must mean a court and if it were a court, the machine would be.the Jury, and the place where His Honor sat, with the little shielded light, would be the judge's bench.
But it all was wrong. It was a fantasy. For what reason would he find himself in court?
"You feeling better now?" His Honor asked.
"Yes, I seem to," said Frost, "but there is something wrong. It seems I'm in a courtroom."
"That," said the other voice, "is exactly where you are."
"But there is no reason for me to be in…"
"If you'll shut up for a minute," said the other, "His Honor will explain."
When he finished saying it, he snickered and the snicker ran all about the room on little, dirty feet.
"Bailiff," said the face that hung above the bench, "that is the last I want to hear from you. This man is unfortunate, indeed, but he is not a subject for your ridicule."
The other man said nothing.
Frost struggled to his feet, hanging to the chair to hold himself erect.
"I don't know what is going on," he said, "and I have a right to know. I demand…"
A ghostly hand waved beside the ghostly head to cut off what he meant to say.
"You have the right," said the face, "and if you'll listen, I'll inform you."
A pair of hands, reaching from behind him, grasped Frost beneath the armpits, hauled him straight, and held him on his feet. Slowly Frost reached out to grasp the back of the chair to hold himself erect.
"I'm quite all right," he said to the man behind him.
The hands released him and he stood alone, propped up by the chair.
"Daniel Frost," said the judge, "I'll make this brief and to the point. There is no other way.
"You have been seized and brought to this court and have undergone a narco-trial. You have been found guilty of the charge and sentence already has been passed and executed, according to the law."
"But that's ridiculous," Frost cried out. "What have I done? What was the charge?"
"Treason," said the judge.
"Treason. Your Honor, you are crazy. How could I…" "Not treason to the state. Treason to humanity." Frost stood rigid, his hands gripping the wood of the chair so hard that the grasp was painful. A tumult Of fear went surging through him and his brain seemed curdled. Words came churning up, but he did not say them. He kept his mouth clamped shut.
For this was not the time, said one tiny corner of his mind that still stayed sane, for the rush of words, for an outpouring of emotion. Perhaps he akeady had said more than he should have. Words were tools and must be used to their best advantage.