I knocked the radio off the edge of the tub and crushed it under heel. There was a pistol on the floor. But Peck had not shot himself; it must have been simply that someone interfered with him and he shot through the door in order to be left alone. I stuck my arms in the hot water, picked him up, and carried him to the bed. He lay there all limp and terrible, with eyes sunken under his brows. If only he were not my friend… if only he were not such a wonderful guy… if only he were not such an outstanding worker…
I called emergency aid on the phone and sat down beside Peck. I tried not to think of him. I tried to think about the business at hand. And I tried to be cold and harsh, because at the very bottom of my conscious mind, that flick of warm feeling, like a speck of light, flashed again, and this time I understood what the thought was.
By the time the doctor came, I knew what I was going to do. I would find Eli. I would pay any sum. Maybe I would beat him. If necessary, I would torture him. And he would tell me, whence this plague flows out upon the world. He would name names and addresses. He would tell me all. And we would find these men. We would locate and burn their secret laboratories, and as for themselves, we would ship them out so far that they would never return. Whoever they might be. We would catch them all, we would catch all who ever tried slug and isolate them, too. Whoever they were. Then I would demand that I, too, be isolated because I knew what slug was. Because I grasped what sort of thought I had, because I was socially dangerous, just as they all are. And all that would be only the beginning. The beginning of all beginnings, and ahead would remain that which was most important: to make it so that people would never, never, wish to know what slug was. Probably that would be outlandish. Probably many would say that it was too outlandish, too harsh, too stupid — but we would still have to do it if we wanted mankind not to stop….
The doctor, an old gray man, put down his white case, leaned over Buba, looked him over, and said indifferently, “Hopeless.”
“Call the police,” I said.
Slowly he put away his instruments.
“There is no need of that whatsoever,” he said. “There’s no criminal content, here. It is a neurostimulator….”
“Yes, I know.”
“There you are — the second case this night. They just don’t know when to stop.”
“When did it start?”
“Not very long ago… a few months.”
“Then why in hell do you keep it quiet?”
“Keep it quiet? I don’t understand. This is my sixth call tonight, young man. The second case of nervous exhaustion and four cases of brain fever. Are you a relative?”
“No.”
“Well, all right, I’ll send some men.” He stood awhile, looking at Peck. “Join some choruses,” he said. “Enter the League of Reformed Sluts…”
He was mumbling something else as he left, an old, bent, uncaring man. I covered Peck with a sheet, pulled the drape, and went out into the living room. The drunks were snoring obscenely, filling the air with alcoholic fumes, and I took them both by the heels and dragged them out in the yard, leaving them in the puddle by the fountain.
Dawn was breaking once more and the stars were dimming in the paling sky. I got into the taxi and dialed the old Subway on the console.
It was full of people. It was impossible to get through to the railing, although it seemed to me that only two or three men were filling out the forms, while the rest were just looking, stretching their necks eagerly. Neither the roundheaded man nor Eli were to be seen behind the barrier, and no one knew where they could be found. Below, in the cross-passages and tunnels, drunken, shouting, half-crazed men and hysterical women were milling about. There were shots, distant and muffled and some loud and close, the concrete underfoot shook with the detonations, and a mixture of smells — gunpowder, sweat, smoke, gasoline, perfume, and whiskey — coated in the air.
Squealing and arm-waving teenagers surrounded a big fellow who dripped blood and whose pale face shone with a look of triumph. Somewhere wild beasts roared menacingly. In the halls, the audience was going wild in front of huge screens showing somebody blindfolded, firing a spray of bullets from a machine gun held against his belly, and someone else sat up to his chest in some black and heavy liquid, blue from the cold and smoking a crackling cigar, and another one with a tension-twisted face, suspended as though cast in stone in some sort of web of taut cords…
Then I found out where Eli was. I saw roundhead by a dirty room full of old sandbags. He stood in the doorway, his face covered with soot, smelling of burnt gunpowder, the pupils of his eyes fully distended. Every few seconds he bent down and brushed his knees, not hearing me at all, so that I had to shake him to make him take notice of me.
“There is no Eli,” he barked. “Gone, do you understand? Nothing but smoke — get it? Twenty kilovolts, one hundred amperes, see? He didn’t leap far enough!”
He pushed me away vigorously and took off into the dirty room, jumping over the sandbags. Elbowing the curious out of the way, he got to a low metal door.
“Let me through,” he howled. “Let me at it once more. God favors a third time!”
The door shut heavily and the mob surged away, stumbling and falling over the bags. I didn’t wait for him to come out. Or not to come out. He was no longer of any use to me. There was only Rimeyer left. There was also Vousi, but I couldn’t count on her. So there was really only Rimeyer. I was not going to wake him. I’d wait outside his room.
The sun was already up and the filthied streets were empty.
The auto-streetcleaners were coming out of their underground garages to do their job. All they knew was work; they had no potentialities to be developed, but they also had no primitive reflexes. Near the Olympic, I had to stop for a long chain of red and green men followed by a string of people enclosed in some sort of scales, who dragged their shuffling feet from one street into the next, leaving behind a stench of sweat and paint. I stood and waited for them to pass, while the sun had already lit up the huge mass of the hotel and shone gaily in the metallic face of Yurkovsky, who, as he had while alive, looked out over the heads of all men. After they passed, I went into the hotel. The clerk was dozing behind his counter. Awaking, he smiled professionally and asked in a cheery voice, “Would you like a room?”
“No,” I replied, “I am visiting Rimeyer.”
‘ Rimeyer? Excuse me — room 902?”
I stopped.
“I believe so. What’s the matter?”
“I beg your pardon, but he is not in.”
“What do you mean, not in?”
“He checked out.”
“Can’t be, he has been ill. You are not mistaken? Room 902?”
“Exactly right, 902, Rimeyer. Our perpetual client. It’s an hour and a half since he left. More accurately, flew away. His friends helped him down and aboard a copter.”
“What friends?” I asked hopelessly.
“Friends, as I said, but, excuse me, they were acquaintances. There were three of them, two of whom I really don’t know. Just young athletic-looking men. But I do know Mr. Pebblebridge, he was our permanent guest. But he signed out — today.”
“Pebblebridge?”
“Exactly. Lately he has been meeting Rimeyer quite often, so I concluded that they were quite well acquainted. He stayed in room 817. A fairly imposing gentleman, middle-aged, red-headed…”
“Oscar!”
“Exactly, Oscar Pebblebridge.
‘That makes sense,” I said, trying to keep a hold on myself. “You say they helped him?”
“That’s right. He has been very sick and they even sent a doctor up: to him yesterday. He was still very weak and the young men held him up by his elbows, and almost carried him.”
“And the nurse? He had an attendant nurse with him?”
“Yes, there was one. But she left right after them — they let her go.”
“And what is your name?”
“Val, at your service.”
“Listen, Val,” I said. “You are sure it didn’t look like they were taking him away forcibly?”
I looked hard at him. He blinked in confusion.
“No,” he said. “Although, now that you have mentioned it…”
“All right,” I said. “Give me the key to his room and come with me.”