[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
gone. That will mean there will be no further possibility of your coming here.
This is your own decision-be sure it's the one you want to make."
George nodded dumbly. "Go ahead. I don't want to come back. Rena will
not remember for long, I'm sure."
There was the rising sound of commotion in the hallway beyond the room,
the sound of running feet and a cry, "George!"
"We'd better hurry," suggested Bradwell. He opened the door of the
machine. The grayness swirled before George.
"Yeah-we'd better hurry." He walked into the fog, the sound of Rena's
voice still in his ears.
--------
*CHAPTER V: The Block*
She burst into the room as Bradwell made a swift movement. His hands
jabbed at the panel of controls on the wall. A darting red glow splashed
through the gray fog and then it was gone. The door opened only to a shallow
chamber lined with polished metal.
"Brad!" she screamed. "Brad!"
She rushed to the panel and looked at what he had done. Her body seemed
suddenly without life. She moved, unmoving, scarcely breathing.
Footsteps sounded behind her on the soft carpeting of the floor. Her
father's hands touched her shoulders. "Rena."
She turned slowly, the life gone out of her eyes. "You were all in on
it, weren't you?"
"We couldn't permit you to do what you planned," said Cramer.
"My life is my own. What gives you the right to destroy my plans and
hopes?"
"You are all that I have to give to the future," said Cramer
pleadingly. "Five centuries of gene selection-you are the best that a thousand
ancestors have to offer the future."
"Am I their prisoner?"
"You are obligated."
"You blocked him," she murmured. "Blocked a hundred years before and
after. I can never see him again-never as long as I live."
"You wouldn't have come back from Cell Four and left him there," said
Dr. Harkase. "We couldn't take the risk of your not coming back merely because
you want to stay with him. We would have gained nothing by the experiment and
would have lost you. As it is, we are quite sure of your return."
"You have lost me anyway!" She faced them with a sudden fury that made
them recoil. "I hate you all. And I will never forgive you."
Bradwell moved impulsively toward her. "Rena -- "
"Get out now. Get out and leave me alone."
They turned and moved toward the door without speaking. Her father's
shoulders sagged but Rena felt no pity for him.
The door opaqued behind them and she pressed a stud on the wall that
locked her in. Only then did she fling herself on the bed and let the sobbing
cry escape from her throat.
* * * *
George Brooks shook his head and raised slowly on his elbows. There was
grass under his face and a shrill singing in his ears. Hard gray morning light
showed the landscape about him. He was lying in a park.
Blearily he looked around and struggled to his feet. He'd better move
on if he didn't want to be run in.
The granddaddy of all hangovers, he thought dully. It hurt just to move
his head. Every bolt that held his gray matter in place seemed to have been
sheared off at once.
He sat down heavily on a green bench and tried to think. Why in thunder
had he gone out and got so drunk? Seemed as if he and Rena had had a date but
he couldn't remember where they'd gone. He couldn't remember taking her to any
bar or club. She wouldn't drink anyway. She never touched the stuff. But what
had happened to her? How had he got such a hangover?
He remembered then-the vague dream of Rena, an anachronistic Rena who
had come from some distant age to take him to a far-off time.
A crazy kind of drunken dream.
Crazy. Like a surging blast of electrons realization flooded through
his nerve channels, straining synapses, choking the involuntary functions of
his body.
He crumpled on the bench and cried in rage. He remembered then the
bland face of Bradwell, the mathematician, the predatory circle of civilized
supermen attacking with their inhuman powers of mind.
How super-civilized they had been! Nothing so crude as "Throw the bum
out!"
No-one by one, they had invaded his mind, planted a seed of suggestion.
A suggestion of fear and retreat because he was a savage and they were
supermen. He remembered Cramer sitting beside him. Now that it was over he
could recall the sensation of their impressed thoughts even though he'd been
unaware of them at the time-unaware that they weren't his own thoughts.
And Bradwell. He knew the answer to that, too. The fellow hoped to
marry Rena himself.
George's fists clenched white with the yearning to smash into that
smooth face. He groaned with the sickness of realization of what they had done
to him.
Rena had seen him go, he thought. Those had been her footsteps and her
voice he had heard in the hall. What would she think? That he had deserted
her? But she would come back. She knew him better than that. She would come
for an explanation.
Bradwell's block. No further possibility of returning, he had said.
Never see Rena again --
And then the one unsurpassable lie. "This is your own decision -- "
They would not lie to him, Rena had said. They had merely forced their wills
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]