The Distorter
The fever of his urgency abated. Prescott’s ship had departed for Venus and nothing had happened. He went over and gazed out of the French windows. The great sweep of lawn that led toward the Machine, spaced here and there with shrubs, was almost deserted. At uneven intervals, gardeners were stooping over flowers, performing the tasks of their profession. Beyond was the Machine, an enormous glittering mass surmounted by its quadrillion-candlepower beacon. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get the Distorter over there.
With abrupt decision, Gosseyn picked up Patricia Hardie’s bedside phone and, when a girl’s voice answered, said, “Give me the chief carpenter, please.”
“I’ll connect you with the Palace Works Superintendent,” the operator said.
A moment later, a gruff voice muttered at Gosseyn, who explained what he wanted and hung up. He was quivering with excitement.
“It’s got to work,” he thought tautly. “Things like this always work when put through with boldness.”
He hurriedly carried the Distorter into the living room. Then he closed the bedroom door. A short time later there was a pounding at the corridor door. Gosseyn unlocked the door and five men trooped in, three of them carrying lumber. Without pause these three fell to work and crated the Distorter. They had silent cutting machines, automatic screwdriving devices; in seven minutes, by Gosseyn’s watch, they were finished. The two truckmen, who had so far done nothing, picked up the crate. One of them said, “We’ll have this delivered in five minutes, mister.”
Gosseyn closed and locked the door behind him, and then went into the bedroom. He didn’t glance at the girl, but hurried to the French windows. In two minutes a truck with a narrow crate on it wheeled into view on the paved road a quarter of a mile away. It drove straight up to the Machine and disappeared into an overlapping fold of metal. Two minutes later it reappeared, empty.
Without a word, Gosseyn walked over and ungagged and unbound the girl. He was conscious of a vague dissatisfaction, an inexplicable sense of frustration.
XXII
Who, then, is sane?
Patricia Hardie sat on the bed rubbing the circulation back into her arms. She didn’t speak, simply sat there massaging, and looking at him, a fault smile curling her lips. The smile puzzled Gosseyn. He glanced at her sharply and saw that the smile was cynical, knowing.
“So you didn’t succeed!” she said.
Gosseyn stared at her. She went on, “You were hoping you’d be killed when you came to the palace today, weren’t you?”
Gosseyn parted his lips to say, “Don’t be silly!” But he didn’t say it. He was visualizing his tight-stomached approach to the palace, his successful accomplishment of his purpose, and then his disappointment. Surely, surely men could fool themselves. The girl’s voice came again, stinging now. “That’s the only reason you came to get the Distorter. You know you’ve got to die and let Gosseyn III appear. And so you were hoping the attempt would land you in deadly danger.”
He could see it clearly now. No sane man could commit suicide or let others kill him without resisting. And so his subconscious had tried to find a way out. “Do I believe,” he wondered, “in Gosseyn III? I do.” He felt stunned. Because he had told himself again and again that it was impossible. “Can I kill myself? Not yet! But there is a way.
Gosseyn turned from the girl without a word, and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” she called after him.
“Back to my hotel. You can reach me there any time.” He paused at the door. He had nearly forgotten that she had a problem, too.
“Better get some plasterers up here to put that wall back in place. As for what else you should do, I’m assuming you know your position better than I, so I’ll leave that up to you. Good-by, and good luck.”
He went out of the door and down onto the boulevard. Downtown, he stopped in a drugstore and asked for a bottle of hypnotic drug.
“Starting to train early for next year’s games, eh?” said the druggist.
“Something like that,” Gosseyn replied shortly.
He went next to a voice-recording firm. “I’d like to rent one of your machines for a week for repeat recordings.”
“Do you want the attachment to make your own recordings?”
“Yes.”
“That will be four dollars and fifty cents, please.”
At the hotel where he had his things, Gosseyn secured the key to his locker and took out the rest of his money; then he returned to the desk. “On the first day of the games,” he said, “I was kicked out of this hotel because of a mix-up over my identity. Will you rent me a room now for a week?”
The clerk did not hesitate. The hotel must have been practically empty, after the great exodus from the city of people who had failed to win at the games. In two minutes a bellhop was leading Gosseyn up to a spacious room.
Gosseyn locked the door, made the recording he had planned, and put it on the player to repeat endlessly. Then he swallowed the hypnotic drug and lay down on the bed. “In twenty-four hours,” he thought, “the effect will wear off, and then—” He put the glittering little automatic he had taken from Patricia Hardie on the table beside the bed.
It was not sleep that came then. It was a torpor, a heavy tiredness through which impressions filtered, particularly noise. One noise, one steady, whining sound—the sound of his voice on the recording he had made.
