Another step, and another. It was as though there were a vast ache that caught at him with every breath. His blood-soaked shirt and pants leg hung against him, icy cold. Ten feet more, and he could make his run for it—
Two men in the black uniform of the State Security Police stepped out into his path, stood with blast-guns leveled at his chest. Mallory pushed away from the wall, braced himself for the burst of slugs that would end his life. Instead, a beam of light speared out through the misty rain, dazzling his eyes.
“You’ll come with us, Mr. Mallory.”
* * *
Still no contact, the Perceptors reported.
The prime-level minds below lack cohesion; they flicker and dart away even as I/we touch them.
The Initiators made a proposal: By the use of appropriate harmonics a resonance field can be set up which will reinforce any native mind functioning in an analogous rhythm.
I/we find that a pattern of the following character will be most suitable . . . A complex symbolism was displayed.
PERSEVERE IN THE FASHION DESCRIBED, the Egon commanded. ALL EXTRANEOUS FUNCTIONS WILL BE DISCONTINUED UNTIL SUCCESS IS ACHIEVED.
With total singleness of purpose, the Ree sensors probed across space from the dark and silent ship, searching for a receptive human mind.
* * *
The Interrogation Room was a totally bare cube of white enamel. At its geometric center, under a blinding white glare panel, sat a massive chair constructed of polished steel, casting an ink-black shadow.
A silent minute ticked past; then heels clicked in the corridor. A tall man in a plain, dark military tunic came through the open door, halted, studying his prisoner. His wide, sagging face was as gray and bleak as a tombstone.
“I warned you, Mallory,” he said in a deep growling tone.
“You’re making a mistake, Koslo,” Mallory said.
“Openly arresting the people’s hero, eh?” Koslo curved his wide, gray lips in a death’s head smile. “Don’t delude yourself. The malcontents will do nothing without their leader.”
“Are you sure you’re ready to put your regime to the test so soon?”
“It’s that or wait, while your party gains strength. I chose the quicker course. I was never as good at waiting as you, Mallory.”
“Well—you’ll know by morning.”
“That close, eh?” Koslo’s heavy-lidded eyes pinched down on glints of light. He grunted. “I’ll know many things by morning. You realize that your personal position is hopeless?” His eyes went to the chair.
“In other words, I should sell out to you now in return for—what? Another of your promises?”
“The alternative is the chair,” Koslo said flatly.
“You have great confidence in machinery, Koslo—more than in men. That’s your great weakness.”
Koslo’s hand went out, caressing the rectilinear metal of the chair. “This is a scientific apparatus designed to accomplish a specific task with the least possible difficulty to me. It creates conditions within the subject’s neural system conducive to total recall, and at the same time amplifies the subvocalizations that accompany all highly cerebral activity. The subject is also rendered amenable to verbal cueing.” He paused. “If you resist, it will destroy your mind—but not before you’ve told me everything: names, locations, dates, organization, operational plans—everything. It will be simpler for us both if you acknowledge the inevitable and tell me freely what I require to know.”
“And after you’ve got the information?”
“You know my regime can’t tolerate opposition. The more complete my information, the less bloodshed will be necessary.”
Mallory shook his head. “No,” he said bluntly.
“Don’t be a fool, Mallory! This isn’t a test of your manhood!”
“Perhaps it is, Koslo: man against machine.”
Koslo’s eyes probed at him. He made a quick gesture with one hand.
“Strap him in.”
Seated in the chair, Mallory felt the cold metal suck the heat from his body. Bands restrained his arms, legs, torso. A wide ring of woven wire and plastic clamped his skull firmly to the formed headrest. Across the room, Fey Koslo watched.
“Ready, Excellency,” a technician said.
“Proceed.”
Mallory tensed. An unwholesome excitement churned his stomach. He’d heard of the chair, of its power to scour a man’s mind clean and leave him a gibbering hulk.
Only a free society, he thought, can produce the technology that makes tyranny possible . . .
He watched as a white-smocked technician approached, reached for the control panel. There was only one hope left: if he could fight the power of the machine, drag out the interrogation, delay Koslo until dawn . . .
A needle-studded vise clamped down against Mallory’s temples. Instantly his mind was filled with whirling fever images. He felt his throat tighten in an aborted scream. Fingers of pure force struck into his brain, dislodging old memories, ripping open the healed wounds of time. From somewhere, he was aware of a voice, questioning. Words trembled in his throat, yearning to be shouted aloud.
I’ve got to resist! The thought flashed through his mind and was gone, borne away on a tide of probing impulses that swept through his brain like a millrace. I’ve got to hold out . . . long enough . . . to give the others a chance . . .
* * *
Aboard the Ree ship, dim lights glowed and winked on the panel that encircled the control center.
I/we sense a new mind—a transmitter of great power, the Perceptors announced suddenly. But the images are confused. I/we sense struggle, resistance . . .
IMPOSE CLOSE CONTROL, the Egon ordered. NARROW FOCUS AND EXTRACT A REPRESENTATIVE PERSONALITY FRACTION!
It is difficult; I/we sense powerful neural currents, at odds with the basic brain rhythms.
COMBAT THEM!
Again the Ree mind reached out, insinuated itself into the complex field-matrix that was Mallory’s mind, and began, painstakingly, to trace out and reinforce its native symmetries, permitting the natural egomosaic to emerge, free from distracting counter-impulses.
* * *
The technician’s face went chalk-white as Mallory’s body went rigid against the restraining bands.
“You fool!” Koslo’s voice cut at him like a whipping rod. “If he dies before he talks—”
“He . . . he fights strongly, Excellency.” The man’s eyes scanned instrument faces. “Alpha through delta rhythms normal, though exaggerated,” he muttered. “Metabolic index .99 . . .”
Mallory’s body jerked. His eyes opened, shut. His mouth worked.
“Why doesn’t he speak?” Koslo barked.
“It may require a few moments, Excellency, to adjust the power flows to ten-point resonance—”
“Then get on with it, man! I risked too much in arresting this man to lose him now!”
White-hot fingers of pure force lanced from the chair along the neural pathways within Mallory’s brain—and met the adamantine resistance of the Ree probe. In the resultant confrontation, Mallory’s battered self-awareness was tossed like a leaf in a gale.
Fight! The remaining wisp of his conscious intellect gathered itself—
—and was grasped, encapsulated, swept up and away. He was aware of spinning through a whirling fog of white light shot through with flashes and streamers of red, blue, violet. There was a sensation of great forces that pressed at him, flung him to and fro, drew his mind out like a ductile wire until it spanned the Galaxy. The filament grew broad, expanded into a diaphragm that bisected the universe. The plane assumed thickness, swelled out to encompass all space-time. Faint and far away, he sensed the tumultuous coursing of the energies that ravened just beyond the impenetrable membrane of force—
The imprisoning sphere shrank, pressed in, forcing his awareness into needle-sharp focus. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that he was locked in a sealed and airless chamber, constricting, claustrophobic, all sound and sensation cut off. He drew breath to scream—
No breath came. Only a weak pulse of terror, quickly fading, as if damped by an inhibiting hand. Alone in the dark, Mallory waited, every sense tuned, monitoring the surrounding blankness . . .
I/we have him! The Perceptors pulsed, and fell away. At the center of the chamber, the mind trap pulsed with the flowing energies that confined and controlled the captive brain pattern.
TESTING WILL COMMENCE AT ONCE. The Egon brushed aside the interrogatory impulses from the mind-segments concerned with speculation. INITIAL STIMULI WILL BE APPLIED AND RESULTS NOTED. NOW!
. . . and was aware of a faint glimmer of light across the room: the outline of a window. He blinked, raised himself on one elbow. Bedsprings creaked under him. He sniffed. An acid odor of smoke hung in the stifling air. He seemed to be in a cheap hotel room. He had no memory of how he came to be there. He threw back the coarse blanket and felt warped floor boards under his bare feet—
The boards were hot.
He jumped up, went to the door, grasped the knob—and jerked his hand back. The metal had blistered his palm.
He ran to the window, ripped aside the dirt-stiff gauze curtains, snapped open the latch, tugged at the sash. It didn’t budge. He stepped back, kicked out the glass. Instantly a coil of smoke whipped in through the broken pane. Using the curtain to protect his hand, he knocked out the shards, swung a leg over the sill, stumbled onto the fire escape. The rusted metal cut at his bare feet. Groping, he made his way down half a dozen steps—and fell back as a sheet of red flame billowed from below.