The Long Sleep

VIII

Joel activated half a dozen data transmitters. Turning slightly in his chair he read the life systems reports on experimental subject Sam-3. The display screens brought in nothing but good news:

He looked through the thick observation window which was placed at eye level in the wall before him, directly above the deck of controls. The pool was only minimally lighted now. The aquamen were just barely visible, quick shadows flickering in the green light.

He picked up his microphone and directed Sam-3 to approach his observation point.

A moment later the aquaman swam into view. He had a quasi-human face, lots of wicked teeth, and he was smiling. Five feet long (one could not say “tall", for that implied that he stood erect; and he never stood erect), with the legs and arms of a man but with the sleekness of a porpoise, Sam-3 was quite a sight. His feet and hands were twice as large as those of a land-bound man, his digits connected by filmy webbing. His neck was marked by six gill slits on each side, spaced close and angled toward his throat from the atrophied flaps of his ears. His eyes were exceptionally large and shielded by transparent lids. He passed the viewpoint and glided away, feet gracefully churning water.

“Get's boring, doesn't it?” Henry Galing asked.

Joel looked at the older man who was in the chair next to his, and he saw why Galing had once given up a fine career in genetic science to run for political office. Wealthy, handsome, dignified, with a confident manner that brooked no debate, he was a father image in whom the voters could place at least psychological confidence. And he wasn't just an image; he was extremely capable. He would have done well by those who elected him — if he'd had a chance to assume office before everything fell apart and the continuation of an elected, democratic government was no longer feasible. However, if mankind had lost a statesman it had gained a superior genetic theorist whose talents were now desperately necessary for the many projects at hand.

“If I were director of the department,” Joel said, “I wouldn't spend time sitting at a console, like you do. It is boring.”

“But we're short of good technicians,” Galing said. “I'd rather take an extra shift myself than load it onto someone who has already done twelve hours at the monitors. Besides, I've been taking a few inhibitors, and I don't need more than two hours sleep a night.”

“Inhibitors are dangerous,” Joel said.

“I know what makes an overdose.”

“But even without an overdose… How long can the body go without sleep — without enough sleep?”

“A year,” Galing said.

“And how long have you been taking them?”

“Only the last few weeks,” Galing said. “A year… And after that, what does it matter? I suppose we'll still be living here a year from now. But we'll just be waiting for the end. With luck though, our children will have started their journeys, leaving us behind…”

They both looked into the pool beyond the observation windows. The aquamen swam by and stared in at them as if the roles in this zoo had changed.

And maybe they had changed at that, Joel thought. It was the aquamen who were going out to the stars, taking the wider universe for their home — while he and Galing and the rest of them were forced to remain behind in the bunkers.

Turning away from the ports, Galing said, “How about you and Anita stopping by my suite for supper tonight. Something simple, a little wine.”

“It's okay with me,” Joel said. “If Anita—”

“I'll ask her,” Galing said. He looked past Joel, down the row of black command chairs. “Anita! Supper tonight? Fine!” He turned back to Joel. “It's all set, then.”

Joel turned and looked at Anita, his raven-haired wife. She was sitting in the fifth chair down from his; she wore a white smock and worked the controls in front of her. She gave him a quick smile, a wink, then returned to her monitors. That was when it all fell apart fast…

He had seen nothing particularly unusual in the rest of it, nothing that seemed false. He had accepted Galing as a genetic scientist instead of a researcher in the paranormal sciences. But he could not fit the woman in the illusion. Delusion? Whatever this was, her name was not Anita. It was… Allison. Or was it? Yes. Oh, yes, Allison Amslow. His wife, Galing's niece. And all the rest of this was wrong too, he now saw. Henry Galing wasn't so friendly as this…

He stood up.

“Joel?” Galing said.

“Bastards!”

“Hey, Joel, what's gotten into you?”

He stepped away from his chair and ran to the door which opened on the “pool” beyond the wall, the door through which he had come after leaving the pod a long, long time ago. It wasn't precisely the same door as it had been; now, it was a heavy steel pressure hatch of the sort you found in submarines. However, when he tugged on it, the door opened without admitting water to the observation room.

No pool existed.

No aquamen.

The “pool” was actually that white-walled, dust-filmed chamber in the basement of the building. Sixteen life support pods stood in neat rows.

Stepping into the room, he looked at the observation windows from the end. A back-projecting hologram machine — just like the projector at his bedroom window in Galing's mansion — had been attached to the inside of each window; the underwater scene which he had been monitoring was a fake.

He started toward the pods, not sure what he intended to do when he reached them. Touching them would be enough. Rapping his knuckles on them would satisfy him. If he could climb up the side of one of them and peer in at the corpse, he would be delighted. Just knowing they were real and not a part of some dream—

“Joel!”

He turned and looked at Henry Galing.

The old man was standing in the doorway between the two rooms. “Come here,” he said.

“Go to hell.”

A second figure appeared in the doorway, crowding Galing. “Do what he tells you,” the faceless man said. He raised one hand and beckoned as if he were talking to a child. “Come here.”

Joel turned away from them and walked over to the cylinders. He rapped his knuckles against them, listened to the hollow echoes. They were real enough.

“You can't escape,” the faceless man said.

Turning, Joel saw the specter immediately behind him, four short steps away. It was dressed in a one-piece black suit as before, hands sheathed in black leather. It took another step and raised one needle-filled palm.

Joel retreated, bumped into the huge cylinder, fell down, and rolled across the concrete floor. He scrambled desperately to his feet again and put one of the life support pods between himself and his unearthly adversary.

“You can play tag with me if you want,” the creature said, placing both hands flat on the pod and leaning toward Joel who was on the other side of it. “But you can't win. Do you see? You have no chance.”

They circled the pod warily.

“Who are you?” Joel asked.

“I'm the sandman.”

“What are you?”

“I'm the sandman.”

“That's no answer.”

“It's all the answer you'll get.”

The faceless man suddenly dropped to his knees and scuttled under the cylinder, making a pass at Joel's legs.

Joel swung out of the way and ran to another pod, took refuge behind it, more watchful than ever.

“Where are we?” he asked the specter when it followed him and took up the game once more.

“Nowhere.”

Without eyes but evidently not without sight, the incredible specter watched him, moved as he moved, gave him no advantage whatsoever.

“Is this really the Twenty-third Century?” Joel asked.

“Who told you that?” The voice seemed to emanate from the lower third of the featureless face, from the spot where a mouth ought to have been. Joel thought he saw the smooth flesh vibrate slightly, like the head of a snare drum trembling with a staccato rhythm.

“Harttle,” Joel said. “He told me.”

“Why should you care what year it is?'

“Tell me.”

“Time doesn't matter,” the sandman said.

“It matters to me.”

At the far end of the room, Henry Galing and the manservant Richard, walked out of the doorway from the observation chamber and started toward the pods. Joel saw them, and he knew that the man without a face was one hundred percent right: he had no chance at all, not even a slender thread of hope.

“You don't have anything to gain by resisting us,” the faceless man said.

“Self-respect,” Joel said.

“Not even that.”

Galing and Richard reached the pod and started around one end of it.

The specter came around the other end.

“You stay back. All of you.”

Richard was grinning.

“I'll kill one of you if I get the chance.”

“You won't,” Galing said.

The old man held up his right hand and showed Joel the needled glove. Richard was wearing one of them too.

They descended on him in a rush. He didn't know which of them touched him first. Darkness came quickly, in a roar of silence.