There were millions of unintegrated people who thought and thought things like that, without ever reaching the point of suicide. It was a matter of sustained intensity and of the awful unbalance that came to men who had tumbled from a height of integration into the depths of despair.
During the first hour, he had many intruding thoughts of his own. “This is silly! My brain is too stable for it ever to be affected by. . . .
It was toward the end of the second hour that a thunderous roar began far away. It kept on and on, frequently rising to such a crescendo that the whining voice beside the bed was drowned out. At last the violent persistence of it wrung a dull, surprised recognition from Gosseyn. “Guns! Artillery fire! Have they started to attack Earth?”
He was conscious of horror. Without having any memory of deciding to get up, he
Wearily, he crawled across the floor to the window. He peered out at another building but the thunder of the guns was louder here, and more furious sounding. And it was coming from the direction of the Machine! For a moment of terrible fear the daze lifted from his mind. The Machine was being attacked!
The Machine, with the Distorter in its possession and under control, must have started broadcasting warnings about the attack on Venus! And the gang was trying to destroy it.
Broadcasting! The hotel-room radio! Crawl toward it. How tired he was!
“Blasted . . . murderous . . . incredible . . . criminal . . . .”
Even through his torpor, the words startled Gosseyn. And then he frowned in understanding: The propaganda war also was on. Everywhere he turned the dial, voices were roaring their threats and accusations. The Machine! The dastardly Machine! Mechanical monstrosity, treacherous, inhuman! The Venusian plotters who had foisted its poisonous alien will upon men. Strait jacket . . . assassin . . . massacre . . .
And all the time, as a background to the lying voices, came the thunder of the guns, the muffled, unceasing thunder of the guns. Gosseyn began to doze. Better get to bed. Tired. So tired.
“GOSSEYN!”
All the other voices blotted out. Radio talking directly to him.
“GOSSEYN, THIS IS THE MACHINE. DON’T KILL YOURSELF.”
“GOSSEYN, DON’T KILL YOURSELF. YOUR THIRD BODY HAS BEEN DESTROYED BY THE GANG. GOSSEYN, I CAN’T LAST MUCH LONGER. DURING THE FIRST HALF HOUR, NORMAL SHELLS WERE FIRED AT ME. BUT AT INTERVALS NOW ATOMIC TORPEDOES HAVE STRUCK AT MY DEFENSES.
“I HAVE A NINETY-FOOT STEEL OUTER BARRIER. GOSSEYN, IT’S BEEN PENETRATED FIVE TIMES BY TORPEDOES THAT CAME FROM THE DIRECTION OF VENUS.
“GOSSEYN, DON’T KILL YOURSELF. YOUR THIRD BODY HAS BEEN DESTROYED. YOU MUST LEARN TO USE YOUR EXTRA BRAIN. I CAN GIVE YOU NO ADVICE ABOUT THAT BECAUSE . . .”
There was a pause, then: “Ladies and gentlemen, the Games Machine has just been destroyed by a direct hit. Its malicious, treacherous attack on the palace has been—”
He had been intending to turn it off for some minutes. Nuisance. Telling him something about— Something— What?
Back on the bed, he lay puzzling about that. Something about—about— How tired he was!
XXIII
Gosseyn’s first conscious effort was to move his hands. He couldn’t. He seemed to be lying on top of them. “Funny position,” he thought. A vague annoyance swept him, and an awareness that he’d have to emerge further out of his hypnotic sleep to free himself.
He was about to make the effort when a memory came as to why he had come to his hotel room. Eyes closed, he waited for the will to death to surge through him. The best method, it seemed to his taut mind, was to snatch the automatic he had put on the table beside the bed and fire into his brain in one synchronized movement. But the impulse to suicide did not come. Instead, out of the depths of him welled a cheerful confidence, a buoyant sense of certain victory, a conviction that nothing could stop him. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t. “It’s the hypnotic drug,” he thought in agony. “Like dope.” He lay there for a moment, puzzling over his feeling in such high spirits while the drug still held him. Then came uneasy recollection—the memory of an interruption and of loud sounds. The connection was obscure, but he had seemed to get out of bed. Had he shut off the record player at that time?
“I’m sure,” said a woman’s voice from his left, “that you can manage now. The drug is not all- powerful.”
The unexpected words did it. Gosseyn opened his eyes. Two awarenesses flashed upon him almost simultaneously. He was lying on his arms, but that wasn’t the reason he couldn’t use them. They were handcuffed together. And sitting in a chair beside the bed, smoking a cigarette, looking at him thoughtfully, was Patricia Hardie. Slowly, Gosseyn, who had half sat up, sank back onto his pillow. The girl took a long puff at her cigarette. Not until she had blown a lazy streamer of smoke at the ceiling did she speak. She said, “I chained you up because you’re a rather dominating person with a very strong will to know things.”
She laughed. It was a quiet, relaxed, wonderfully musical laugh. It startled Gosseyn. He noticed, suddenly, that she looked different. The pettish expression, that attribute of neuroticism, was gone from her. All the pleasing features of her good-looking face remained, but they were changed in a subtle fashion. Her beauty, that had been weak though bright, was revealed now in strength. Vivid as fire, her personality flamed at him. She had always been cool, sure of herself. Enhanced by her new maturity, those qualities showed magnificent. In some indefinable fashion, the pretty, headstrong girl had overnight become a glowingly alive, beautiful woman who said, “I had better get down to business. I took the risk of coming here because your action in sending the Distorter to the Games Machine has backfired. And something will have to be done about it tonight.”
For Gosseyn, the pause that followed was extremely welcome. His mind was still wrapped around what she had said earlier: “You have . . . a will to know about things.” He had indeed, but where did she fit into that? He was not, he realized, grasping the meaning of her presence here. Patricia Hardie had told him many things, but he had never had the impression that she herself was playing a vital part in this drama of null-A against the universe.
