Hell's Gate

upward. Everything shimmered. He moved, again, like a robot.

They toured the house with little conversation, though she tried to initiate some several times and seemed puzzled that, when he was so close to coming out of his shell, he had suddenly drawn back into it. The drive back to town, to arrange financing terms, was stilted and uncomfortable as far as Lynda was concerned. Iron Victor Salsbury only stared straight ahead.

The vice-president of the major local bank was hesitant about giving a mortgage to an artist without a full- time job. He softened considerably when Salsbury produced thirty thousand in cash, proceeded to pay twenty thousand on the house, and deposited five thousand in savings and four thousand in checking. His gold-plated, silver-dollar heart thumped almost audibly at the sight of so much money, and he concluded their conference with a lecture on the dangers of carrying so much money around on one's person.

At his request, Lynda helped him buy a car, a slightly used MGB-GT, bright yellow with a black top. The programmed Victor Salsbury did not care what sort of vehicle he had; the other part of him liked the honeybee bug. He wrote out a check for the full amount, waited while the suspicious salesman checked it with the bank, came back all smiles and closed out the deal.

After that, Lynda returned to her agency, and he went to buy groceries. A complete, standard list of purchases was programmed into his mind, and he chose the articles like an automaton, moving mechanically up and down the aisles. It was a quarter until six in the evening when he reached the Jacobi house, now the Salsbury residence. He put the groceries away, made a supper of eggs, ham and toast. He opened a cold beer automatically, as if this was the thing to do, part of the front he had to put up. The average man would sit down on his porch with a beer of a spring evening. To preserve the illusion of naturalness, so did he. The view from the stoop was a breath-taking panorama of green Pennsylvanian hills. Deep inside his mind, the soft Victor appreciated that scene and said, softly to himself, ?Well, let's see what happens next.?

CHAPTER 4

What happened next was that he acquired the quickest drunk in the history of beer drinking. As he watched the sun disappear and leave bloody streaks behind it in the sky, his eyes began to feel funny, as if they were coated with fuzz. His head was doing an apache dance with the rest of his body for a partner. Warily, he rose, staggered inside, up the steps, which were ridiculously difficult to negotiate. He started for the master bedroom, but the soft Victor had visions of a head whose two halves were out of kilter, and he meandered back towards the hall to a guest room. The bed had a cover, but no sheets. He found sheets in a linen closet, brought them back, but could not manage to get them on the mattress. The damn thing kept changing size and jumping around. Finally he gave it up and crawled under the spread. He remembered that he had his clothes on, then decided that would make up for having no sheets. In the back of his mind, he made a note to try to discover the reason for his high susceptibility to alcohol. Then he passed out.

He had a nice dream that got bad. Very bad.

He was standing in a field of clover. The sun was streaming through trees at the side of the field and throwing shadows and strips of brilliance across him. It was late afternoon, and already the cooler air of evening had drifted in. A darkly tanned blonde with thick, long hair was walking across the field toward him. Her eyes were clover green and transparent so that he seemed to be looking through them, miles and miles and miles into some other worldly landscape. She held out her arms to him. As he took her into his embrace, she grew suddenly stiff and began talking in an even voice, cool, dispassionate, the voice of iron Victor.

He woke, smacking his lips and wondering what had died inside his mouth. He tried to spit the little animal out, found it was his tongue, decided to save it. His ears were ringing. He yawned, trying to pop them. But the ringing continued. The phone would not be hooked up until tomorrow, and he had set no alarm. Yet the longer he listened the more certain he was that the whining sound was real, not imagined. He pushed to the side of the bed and looked down at his feet, a little surprised that he had not even taken off his shoes, but not too concerned about it.

He stood up and immediately wished he hadn't. He was apparently some creature God had designed for horizontal existence. As soon as he was vertical, his eyes bugged out a foot, his head swelled to four times its normal size, and his stomach turned inside out and died. He decided that the worst that could happen had already happened. With that in mind he went through the door into the hallway, leaned against the wall and listened to the noise.

It was coming from the lower part of the house. He went down the steps, wondering why, if they were going to put an escalator in, they didn't make it a good one. The steps went back and forth as well as up and down, and it took one a long time to reach the living room floor. When he got there, he found the noise was coming from a lower point yet. He found the cellar door, opened it. The ringing sound washed over him, twice as loud now, the sound of heavy machinery masked by the electronic hum. He burped, squinted into the gloom, flicked on the lights, and carefully descended the cellar stairs.

Standing in the center of the cellar, the noise around him akin to that in a lathe shop, he tried to locate the exact source of the sound. At last, he zeroed in on a section of wall to his right. When he placed his hands on it, he could feel a far-away vibration. He thought he detected a change in the coloration of the wall here, but could not be certain. On impulse, he flicked off the light.

Immediately, a glowing blue circle, six feet in diameter, appeared on the wall.

He realized, then, that soft Victor had been in control of this body ever since he had awakened. Now, the iron part of him surged up, radiating fear, and struggled for the reins. Soft Victor shrank into the recesses of his mind.

He looked at the circle, evenly calculating now, still fearful. The edges of the mark were as perfectly defined as if it had been the terminus of a high intensity flashlight beam. But nothing of that sort was being played on the wall from anywhere in the room. If anything, the light was coming from the other side.

Then, while he watched it, the circle dimmed, faded, and was gone. So was the ringing. He waited another fifteen minutes, wondering what he was to do. The program seemed to be failing him. Though, whatever was happening, he was sure to be involved in it soon. After all, he had not acquired this particular house merely to live in. He had only to wait, and he would discover what was going to happen.

As he climbed the stairs again, the iron Victor slipped out of dominance and released control to its alter-ego. Wearier than ever, he returned to bed, fell quickly into sleep after undressing this time. Unfortunately, he had the same dream. The one that began nicely and ended badly. At least it was about Lynda.

The next morning was no fun. The thing that had died in his mouth the previous night had begun to rot. And even though it was his tongue, he was sore put to retain it rather than throw it away. While he was sleeping, someone had laid his head open with a mallet, and he needed most of the morning to push his brains back inside.

By noon, as the iron portion of him slightly asserted itself-though not with its previous intensity-he was feeling well enough to go back to the cave to retrieve the trunks. They were all there, three neat strong, closed pieces without locks or keyholes. ?Well,? Salsbury said to the computer, ?everything went fairly well.?

There was no answer.

He detailed his transactions with the house, car, and groceries. The 810-40.04 just stood there, looking like nothing more than a common inanimate clothes trunk.

?What about the noise in the cellar?? Salsbury asked. ?And the light circle on the wall??

But there was no reply. He kicked it solidly, then wished he hadn't. The blow sent shock waves up his leg, deep throbbings of pain, while the trunk did not even sport a small dent. He searched through the quiet, iron part of his mind for clues, but that programmed section seemed to be growing more hazy, less well defined with every passing moment, and he learned nothing useful. He shrugged, decided he might as well move things into the house and wait for the pint-sized mechanical brain to get over its sulking.

He grabbed the first trunk, tested it for weight. Suddenly, it was floating several inches off the floor, doing some absurd Indian fakir's trick. A handle slid out of the end, appearing magically from the smooth metal. He grabbed that, tugged hard. A little too hard. The trunk moved as if it weighed all of three ounces. It knocked him down, sailed over him, and came to rest at the mouth of the cave, tilted as if it would slide down the embankment