The Long Sleep

He would take the script and tear it up. This was his play now, his stage. He was ready for a bit of dramatic improvisation.

He thought: there is another way out of here,

Henry. I would much prefer to use the door. But there is another way.

That was a problem with stage settings. They were not as formidable as the real item. They could always collapse on you in the middle of a crucial scene. If this had been a real prison cell, the men who had built it would have made damned sure that the only way out was through the front door. But this was a jerry-rigged cell, not a bad stage setting, a nifty piece of theater, but a poor reality.

He went to the drainage grill that was set in the center of the cobbled floor. So far as he could tell, the iron work was not welded in place. Kneeling, he hooked his fingers in the grid and strained against it. Wedged in place, partly cemented by grime, it would not at first budge. He pulled harder, grunted as his tender hip and stomach suddenly flushed full of new pain. Without warning, the grid came away, almost knocked him backwards. He took it from its chiseled niche and put it quietly to one side.

The storm drain smelled like a dead horse lying on a compost heap on a hot July day. A cool draft rose from it, rich with sarcophagus odors.

He leaned away from it and gasped for fresh air. Gagging, he considered using the door even if they were expecting him to go that way. He didn't want to have to face the incredible stench and limitless darkness of that tunnel. Especially the darkness: it had a very real quality of evil in it. Then he remembered the candle in the pan by the door, and he went to fetch it.

He placed the pan and the stubby candle on the edge of the drain opening. The orange flame leaped up, forked like a snake's tongue. It danced wildly as the draft caught it, and it caused his shadow to cavort demonically on the stone walls. A thin string of soot wriggled lazily toward the ceiling. Most of the light was wasted: it filled every corner of the cell but it didn't illuminate the pit beneath him.

Lying on his stomach, he eased himself backwards and slid into the drain feet first. Balanced on his stomach on the rude stone edge of the hole, he gripped the cell floor with both hands and lowered himself all the way down.

However, even when he was hanging full length from the lip of the drain, his feet did not touch the floor of the tunnel. What would happen when he let go? He had a brief but vivid vision of himself falling head over heels down a mile-long shaft into the black bowels of the earth. He would scream and flail the whole way down, to no purpose.

He began to sweat.

The door didn't seem like such a bad way to leave anymore. Not even if Galing did want him to go that way…

He stretched as best he could, kicked his feet, tried to find the tunnel floor. Ke kicked empty air.

You can't hang here forever, he told himself.

His muscles ached from scarless wounds. His hip was throbbing and hot. His stomach felt as if it were tearing away from the rest of him, and he thought he might be sick any second now. Sweat ran into his eyes. He blinked, licked salty lips, looked up at the well lighted cell…

“Oh, what the hell,” he whispered.

He let go.

The tunnel floor was inches beneath his feet, and he met it like a cat landing on its feet. It didn't even jar him.

He reached up and brought the candle down with him, looked at the slimy gray-brown walls. It wasn't very pleasant, but it was better than the cell

No one called out overhead. He knew that he was going to get out clean and easy.

He turned quickly into the right-hand branch of the tunnel and walked away from that place.

XI

He was afraid of rats. He remembered only too well the size, strength, and potential ferocity of the specimen that had been contentedly gnawing on his shoe when he woke in the prison cell. When he'd met it's glittering red eyes he had seen no fear in it; indeed, he felt that it was carefully, brazenly sizing him up, calculating its chances if it were to attack. If it hadn't been alone, if another rat had been with it… How many of its relatives lived down here in the drains? Dozens? Hundreds? If they were to come after him, not one at a time but in legions, he knew that he would not be able to save himself.

Then, when he was hardly more than a dozen steps into the drain, he saw the rat. It was sitting in the middle of the tunnel floor, facing him. He almost turned and ran before he realized that something was wrong with it. Its eyes were dark brown circles; they were no longer bloodshot, no longer red and glittering. And it was absolutely motionless, as if it were dead — except that it was on its feet and not in any posture of death.

Ready to jump sideways and run if it should begin it move, he closed in on the rat. It remained still, silent, dark-eyed. He knelt beside it, touched it, picked it up, turned it over, and saw that it was a machine.

Well, he thought, why not'? A mechanical rat…

Thus far, every one of Galing's stage settings had been especially well detailed and realistically drawn. At the beginning of each new act in this senseless drama, Joel had been convinced, to one degree or another, that it was perfectly real. If Galing could go to the trouble of setting up that scene with the aquamen, why not a robot rat to nibble at his shoe and throw a bit of fear into him?

At least they had not put him in a place where genuine rats could come to dine on him. The mechanical rodent was a little extra insurance for them, a nasty deterrent that would keep him from going down into the storm drains. They had evidently put some thought into it… They had sent the rat to chew on his sole; they had caused it to escape down the drain; and they thought that, knowing the tunnel contained rats, Joel would certainly choose to leave his cell through the front door, according to the program. Anyway, if they hadn't really endangered him, it must mean that they didn't actually want to kill or maim him.

Or maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe they hadn't used a real rat simply because they couldn't get hold of one.

Whatever the case, they had underestimated his anger and frustration. When he had a choice between twelve-pound rats and Galing's program, he had gladly chosen the rats.

Joel threw the machine to the floor of the tunnel. Transistors and circuit boards broke inside of it.

He held the candle pan high and continued down the drain, no longer worried about rats.

What he did have to worry about was the moss. He was afraid it was going to block his escape.

The deeper he went into the subterranean passageway, the thicker the moss became. It grew on the curved walls of the drain, above his head, below his feet, on both sides of him. When he first noticed it, the moss only flourished in widely scattered patches. But the farther he walked the larger those patches became and the closer they were to one another — until the stuff finally sheathed every inch of the inside walls of the corrugated steel pipe. It was spongy, damp and blue-green, and it shimmered prettily in the candlelight. Once it had claimed all the metal surface, it stopped growing laterally and began to thrust tendrils into the air space; it was as thick and often as long as a young girl's hair. It was cold to the touch, unnaturally cold for plant life. In places it thrived so well that he was forced to squeeze through a narrowed tunnel, sometimes on his hands and knees, the wet moss dragging over him like the hands of a corpse.

Moss slapped across his eyes.

He pushed it aside.

It got in his mouth.

He spat it out.

Once when he stopped to rest, he made the mistake of examining the growth too closely. He saw that the hair-thin filaments which constituted the mother-plant were in a constant sate of agitation. They twisted through one another, abraded one another, braided one another… They slithered like snakes, writhed, wrapped together and pulsed as if fornicating, extricated themselves only to form new entanglements. The moss appeared to have the life