“Utility floor,” the man announced. “This is where I get out.”
The utility floor. Only thirteen stories up, Glen realized, on the floor he’d set aside to hold part of the mass of equipment that would run the huge building’s systems. Only a second ago he would have sworn they were much higher.
This was ridiculous!
“I think I’ll go on up to the top,” he said, forcing himself to sound matter-of-fact, hoping his nervousness wasn’t reflected in his voice.
The hard hat hesitated, and Glen instinctively knew the man was remembering what had happened the last time the architect had visited the site. “You want me to go up with you?” he asked.
Glen shook his head. “I’ll be fine.” But as the construction worker got out of the elevator and it began creaking upward, he wondered if he’d told the truth. When the elevator finally rattled to a stop a few minutes later, he knew he hadn’t.
Determined to overcome the fear that was congealing in his gut, Glen opened the door and got out. The platform around the open shaft of the elevator had been expanded since the day he’d had his heart attack. A wide path of rough-cut four-by-twelves extended all the way to the edge of the framework. If he stayed in the center of that path, he would be perfectly safe.
Taking a deep breath, Glen moved forward, telling himself it didn’t matter that there were no handrails, that there was, indeed, nothing at all to steady himself with. When he was still five feet short of the edge, he stopped.
His stomach felt queasy, and he was finding it a little difficult to breathe.
His heart was beating quickly, but not quite pounding, and there was none of the pain he’d felt in his chest and left arm before the heart attack.
All he had to do was take a few more steps.
Fixing his eyes on one of the steel girders that would soon support the outer skin of the building, knowing that if he could just get to it — touch it — he would be all right, he started forward.
One step, then another, and another.
Reaching out, his fingers touched the cold steel, then closed on one of the thick ridges of the I beam. He edged closer to the girder.
And to the edge.
Now he was starting to feel dizzy, but he struggled against it, determined not to give in to the panic that was threatening to overwhelm him.
All he had to do was look down. Just one look, down to the sidewalk forty stories below, and he would have done it.
He edged closer and looked down.
Instantly, the chasm yawned open, drawing him outward, pulling him down. He felt himself leaning over, and an insane urge to jump blossomed inside him. Now he could feel it, feel the wind rushing past him as he dropped, feel the weightlessness of the fall. If he just let go …
He felt his fingers loosen on the girder, felt himself begin to lean out over the precipice, felt the dizziness take control of him.
No!
The single barked command came out of nowhere, slashing through the panic that had fogged his mind. Instinctively spinning around, Glen swept the platform with his eyes, searching for the person whose voice had broken the terrible trance of the acrophobia.
He saw no one.
But the voice spoke again: Down. Now.
Obeying the command, Glen started back toward the elevator. But as he crossed the platform this time, there was no trace of uncertainty in his step, no feeling of dizziness in his head, no hard knot of fear in his stomach.
And no consciousness of what he was doing.
CHAPTER 44
The Experimenter felt good this morning. For the first time, he felt truly strong, strong enough that he would no longer have to put him to sleep.
Even yesterday, when Glen had begun to wake up while the Experimenter was working on the cat, he hadn’t really tried to stop the Experimenter’s work. He’d merely watched at first, but the Experimenter had been certain that, in a way, Glen had actually enjoyed it. After all, the Experimenter had experienced every emotion Glen had felt as, together, they’d carried out the work on the cat.
First there had been resistance, manifested by a faintly sick feeling in the pit of his belly. But the Experimenter had known that wouldn’t last long — perhaps if he’d tried to work with the dog, or even the bird, it would have been more difficult But the Experimenter had known that Glen didn’t really like the cat.
Didn’t like her any more than the Experimenter himself did. And that made things even simpler, for with their mutual antipathy toward the animal, their two minds were already working in a primitive synchronicity.
All the Experimenter had to do was reinforce that synchronicity, strengthen that tenuous bond that the cat herself had established between them. He’d worked slowly, letting Glen watch, letting him get used to what they were going to be doing. “It’s all right,” he’d whispered. “We’re not going to kill her. We’re only going to see what makes her live.”
He’d felt Glen relax slightly, felt him begin to shed that peculiar sense of guilt that kept so many people from accomplishing all that they were able.
The Experimenter had thought about guilt as he waited for the cat to fall into unconsciousness. It was a concept he understood in the abstract, but could not remember ever having experienced. For him, guilt was not something to be overcome, or cast off.
It simply had never existed.
Occasionally he’d wondered if his lack of guilt could be construed as a character flaw, and — again in the abstract — he’d supposed it could be, at least by people of far less intelligence than he. For himself, it was nothing of the sort; indeed, it offered him freedom. His studies — his experiments — were never hindered by any feelings that perhaps he shouldn’t be doing what interested him the most.
And what interested him most — the only thing that had ever interested him at all — was the study of life.
Not the meaning of life — he’d lost interest in that when he was still a boy and had come to the conclusion that life had no meaning.
Life simply was.
Ergo, since there was no “why,” the only important thing was “how.”
Logic had long ago made it clear to him that his freedom from the restrictions that guilt imposed on other men allowed him to investigate the phenomenon of life with the use of methods that were unavailable to those selfsame others.
Unfettered, he had pursued his studies.
Yesterday he had begun to teach Glen Jeffers to find the same joy in knowledge that he himself had.
By the time the cat had fallen unconscious, he’d explained to Glen that its death was not their intention. Thus, when he began running the X-Acto knife from the cat’s belly up to its neck and Glen had not tried to stop him, the Experimenter knew that Glen had experienced the same thrill as a medical student witnessing his first surgery.
Throughout the procedure, the Experimenter felt Glen’s interest grow. Even better, he had been able to experience for himself Glen’s own wonder when at last the living creature’s beating heart was exposed.
“Touch it,” he’d whispered.
Together, they’d touched the animal’s throbbing organ, and a surge of joy had gone through the Experimenter, transporting him with an exhilaration he hadn’t known in years, for this time he wasn’t merely
