The Long Sleep

VI

Henry Galing said, “You'd better wake Richard and Gina so we can go over this together step by step. We don't want any mistakes. We have enough problems already.”

“Of course, Henry,” the faceless man said. The smooth plane of his face did not even wrinkle as he spoke. He got up, stretched, and started for the door.

With the swiftness of instinct, Joel backstepped to the next door along the corridor and went into the darkened library. He closed the door most of the way but left a narrow crack through which he could observe the hall.

The faceless man walked past without seeing him and went up the stairs even more quietly than Joel had descended them.

Joel hoped no one planned a bed check.

Two minutes later the faceless man returned with Richard and Gina in tow. None of them was particularly excited. They'd have been whooping if they had known that he wasn't tucked in bed with Allison, exhausted from lovemaking. The three of them entered the den and this time they closed the door all the way.

He remained in the library for a few minutes, then returned to the hall and sidled down to the den door. But the heavy oak door was too thick to permit eavesdropping. What were they saying in there? What had they planned for him? Why? Well, whatever the hell they were doing, they didn't have his best interest at heart. It hardly mattered whether or not he knew all the details or even the main intent. They were not humanitarians.

Noiselessly, he returned to the second floor bedroom. He found well cut, expensive streetclothes in the closet, and he slipped into them: knitted slacks, a blue silk shirt, a lightweight rayon jacket that had never come off any department store rack.

He sat on the edge of the bed and gently shook Allison's shoulder until she stopped mumbling, opened her eyes, and yawned at him. “What is it? Hmmm?”

“We're going away now,” he said. He tried to remain calm, tried not to consider the possibility that he'd lost his mind.

“Away?” she asked.

“Whisper,” he said.

“Why are we going away?”

Looking at her closely, he fancied that he could see the effects of some drug in the circles around her eyes, although she was otherwise fresh and healthy.

She didn't like the way he was staring at her. “What are you doing? What's wrong?”

“Get dressed while I explain.”

“It's that urgent?”

“Yes. Hurry.”

She did as she was told, although she was obviously confused by his story of sinister plots and faceless men. When he was done, she took both his hands in her hands. “Joel, I think this was a bad dream. Just a nightmare, darling.”

“It's true.”

She touched his face. Her fingers were cool. “You did have a head injury. I don't want you to feel I'm being—”

Her tone precluded his getting angry, for she was only concerned about him, nothing more. “If I fell off the garage roof,” he said, interrupting her to save time, “where's my head wound?”

She was startled by the question.

“Well?”

“I… I don't understand.”

He went to the window and opened it. “Come here.” He held her up so she could touch the hologram screen which was now showing a very realistic, three-dimension night scene complete with moon and stars. The traffic on the highway was preceded by headlights.

She was stunned by the revelation. “But what in the world does it mean?”

“I don't know. But I do know we aren't going to find out until we're away from here.”

Clutching his arm, leaning on him for support, she said, “I'm scared, Joel.”

“Me too.”

He kissed her. He was pleased that implicit in her statement was a willingness to do whatever he wished. She had adjusted to the bizarre situation much faster than he had expected she would.

“What now?” she whispered.

“Do you have any money?”

“Quite a bit in my purse.”

“Good enough,” he said. “We may need it when we get away from here. We might be in another country; we might be a long way from home.”

“But why?'

“I keep asking myself the same question,” he said. “So far, I can't find an answer to it.” He kissed her again. Then: “Stay close behind me. Once we're out of the house, we can decide what to do. With money, we aren't helpless.”

“Uncle Henry's no villain, though,” she said, still worrying at it.

“Are you sure you have an Uncle Henry?”

“Of course! There may be deception here… illusions… But that's part of the truth. Uncle Henry's real. And so is his Galing Research — and our marriage. I don't understand the faceless man. That's incredible! And the window… But the rest of it isn't a lie, Joel!”

She unsettled him, for he was more ready to accept an entire fraud, no matter how fantastic it might be, rather than have to explain half of one. But in either case, how could you explain a man without a face?

There could be no such thing.

But there was.

In the upstairs corridor they paused, as he had done earlier, to adjust to the darkness. Then they went downstairs, past the den where the voices of the four conspirators seeped through the door too soft to be distinguished word for word.

In the kitchen, he almost fell over a straight-backed chair, caught himself just in time. He opened the back door and stared out at a lawn and trees much like the scene which the hologram had shown them from his upstairs window. The highway and the cars were the only things missing.

“Why show us a fake when the real thing isn't that much different?” he asked.

“Let's hurry,” she said. Her tone, the expression on her face were the first indications he'd had, aside from her word, that she was really frightened.

He wondered briefly if her fear was generated by the absurd circumstances in which they found themselves — or whether she knew more about all of this than he did, knew something that especially put her on edge. He had overheard Galing say that she was drugged. But wasn't it possible… No. For Christ's sake, he couldn't let himself think a thing like that. It smacked of paranoia. He needed someone to trust in the middle of the surreal nightmare, some touch with reality, someone with whom he could make plans.

He took her hand and led her quickly across the lawn toward the trees; in fact, the journey was too quick. Although the lawn appeared to be several acres deep they crossed it in only a dozen paces. When they turned and looked back at the mansion, which was surely no more than thirty feet away, it appeared to be distant, shrunken as if a full quarter of a mile lav between them and the kitchen door from which they had just departed.

“Am I crazy?” she asked.

“If you are, it's group insanity,” he said. “How in the hell is that done?”

“And why?”

He was bewildered.

He could see that a man, desirous of a lot of land but with a bank account much too small to permit an estate of any size, might want to employ this sort of ruse to give himself the feeling of distance, possessions, wealth. That made sense — even if the science behind it seemed quite impossible. But the rest of it made no damned sense at all… Even if such an illusion could be created, surely the cost of it would be higher than the price of the land itself. Furthermore, for Galing to go to the trouble of creating this excellent illusion — and for him to go to the extra trouble of using a hologram screen on the bedroom window so that the genuine article could not be seen—that was insanity…

“What are they trying to prove?”

She clutched his arm. “Joel, he's here.”

“Who?”

Standing in the shadow of the trees, cloaked in darkness, she shrank back as if pinned in a spotlight. “Back at the house. Uncle Henry.”

Galing stood in the open kitchen doorway, staring hard at the trees.

“He can't see us,” Joel said.

“How do you know he can't hear us?” she whispered. “He's only thirty feet away.”

“Come on,” he said. “We can lose them in the woods.”