New Writings in SF 20 - [Anthology] Read online

  False reassurances for a man who looked like a wizened monkey. And all the while that godawful, soul-destroying feeling ... there’s something inside, there’s something under my skin, something crawling through my bones.

  And all they could find in the samples of planet matter they analysed was one tiny, ineffectual looking virus-type crystal. A little dodecahedron with spikes. The natives!

  Weinshenk recalled all this with a feeling of warmth towards his crew mates. He knew he was alive. He could feel he was alive. And they had said he would live. They had assured him. And if he had doubted, well, they could forgive him that, for he had been a very sick man.

  Now he felt well. Everything was well. He had survived contact with Aurigae Sam II. And if he never went back to his planet it would be too soon. Aurigae Sam II would have to do without him.

  He opened his eyes and blinked—the sun was very-bright. He smiled. From a long way away someone shouted his name. Then his smile faded. He looked about him and an uneasiness stirred within him. He sat up and surveyed the room.

  Something was very wrong.

  * * * *

  Sam Weinshenk opened his eyes. Or rather, the eyes that were already opened now began to see. But they didn’t move.

  Weinshenk was suddenly very afraid. For some moments he had been aware of where he was, what he was doing, who was with him; it had been like rousing from a very dark and featureless dream. Thrust into the world of the living his first impulse had been to smile and sit up.

  That was when he found he could do neither. Now he found he could move no part of his body, not his eyelids, not his eyeballs. Nothing. He wasn’t even breathing. His heart was not beating. The familiar sound of blood being pumped through his temples just was not there.

  ‘I’m paralysed! he thought. My God, I’m completely and utterly paralysed.

  A sudden panic filled him and built up and overflowed and he screamed within himself, and screamed and screamed.

  While outwardly the man lay absolutely motionless and only a flicker on an oscilloscope told of any change in his condition.

  What’s that?’ asked the man in dark glasses who had just walked into Weinshenk’s field of view. His voice was flat.

  Andrew! screamed Weinshenk. But there was no sound. Andrew Slater! My God; Andrew Slater! Andrew, and he can’t hear me, doesn’t even know that I’m alive. Andrew! For God’s sake, Andrew ... my buddy, Andrew. Can’t you hear me ?

  ‘Adrenalin level,’ murmured a technician. He was robed in white. His face was sallow and his eyes dull. A moron, thought Weinshenk. ‘That’s the patient’s adrenalin level in the blood—and it just rose a little.’

  ‘Significantly?’ asked a woman’s voice.

  Who’s that? wondered Weinshenk. I can’t see her. That voice ... where have I heard that voice ? Not ... not, Angela, surely!

  The thought of Angela filled him with sorrow. Where is she?

  ‘In an ordinary person,’ said the technician, ‘that sort of fluctuation would be encountered, say, when crossing a road or when a sudden noise breaks a period of silence. But with the patient—it is highly significant.’

  ‘How?’ said the woman.

  ‘It means he’s alive,’ said Slater. ‘It means he’s thinking, he’s aware. Ye gods ... imagine it,’ he turned to look at Weinshenk. ‘That guy’s entombed in his own body.’

  ‘Horrible,’ said the woman. Weinshenk was conscious of movement from the direction of the voice. A shadow at the edge of vision but he could discern nothing.

  ‘Not necessarily entombed,’ said the technician. ‘We have no reason to suppose the patient is conscious—it is possible to respond to stimuli while unconscious.’

  Slater came over and peered more closely at Weinshenk. He was right in focus. ‘Hi, Sam. If you can hear me, and I reckon you can since you seem to be reacting...’ he chuckled, bent closer. ‘By reacting I mean a few flickers on a damn green screen—remember the screens in the ship? Those darn traces used to drive us nuts. Remember?’

  And how! thought Weinshenk.

  ‘Anyway, Sam, if you can hear me, you’re a puzzle...there’s something up with you. God knows what. I don’t want to get you worried but nobody’s got a clue.’ He grinned. ‘That’s where our chance lies. The doctors are so puzzled by you they’re working themselves to shadows— somebody’ll come up with something. I suppose you’re wondering about Mr. Virus. Remember Virus ? Almost one of the family, that little fellah is. They’re trying to find it in you. So far no luck and it begins to look as if he’s innocent after all.’ He paused and glanced out of Weinshenk’s view. Somebody had come into the room. ‘I’m talking to him, OK?’

  ‘All right,’ replied somebody from a few feet away.

  Like an animal in a zoo. Like an oddity, be nice to him, humour him. Weinshenk was sour. But there was something sincere about Slater. As the senses became heightened so Weinshenk became aware of the screen between him and everybody. It must have been extremely thin and perfectly transparent, sound conducting, light conducting, he had not even noticed it before. But it was there, between him and the rest of them. A protective screen, a guard against bugs.

  Slater, went on. ‘We’re trying to figure a way of talking to you—so’s you can reply, I mean. I just know you’re conscious, Sam. Remember how we talked about empathy and telepathy? What I’d give for that particular power, eh? But remember the feeling I got when you were in trouble on the planet’s surface? Remember? I told you how I’d felt I was being overrun with something nasty, a horrible sort of skin crawling sensation, seeping in through the pores, almost. And I had a feeling it was you that was experiencing it. And it turned out I was right. Well, I’ve got that sort of deep and solid feeling now, Sam—that you’re awake and listening. And soon, my boy, we shall be able to talk, if only by one of them damn screens.’

  The encephalograph, thought Weinshenk. What in hell does the encephalograph register ? For heaven’s sake—if I’m thinking it ought to show up.

  ‘We’re working on it, Sam,’ concluded Slater. He drew away, walked round the bed and moved out of view. All Weinshenk could see was the ceiling, a piece of window, a cord dangling from a socket at the ceiling edge, the limb of a climbing plant and about three inches of panelling. He was aware of three green lines, straight and unkinked. Screens.

  The technician’s voice murmured, ‘You still think he’s conscious, Mr. Slater?’

  ‘Why not ? asked Slater.

  The deep voice (doctor?) said, ‘If he were conscious, Mr. Slater, I assure you it would show on the e.e.g.’

  So, thought Weinshenk. I don’t show up. But why not?

  ‘Have you considered the possibility that something might be vetting the output of his neural signals?’ It was Slater.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You think in electrical signals, right ? Well, more or less, OK? Right. Now supposing something doesn’t want those electrical signals to be manifest outside the body.’

  ‘What something are you referring to, Mr. Slater ?’ It was the deep voice.

  Slater didn’t answer for a moment. Then, ‘There were three others besides Sam on the ship. We all felt as if some existence had come aboard with him when he returned from the planet. It was a sort of sixth sense.’ He hesitated. ‘I know the idea of, what, invasion by some alien existence sounds fantastic—but we were on a fantastic planet, Doctor, Don’t discredit our idea as a whim. That man is dead, yet he is alive. Something is keeping him alive but in an effectively dead state. Have you asked yourselves why he hasn’t started to rot? Because he ought to have done. And those bursts on the e.e.g. Microseconds I know, but maybe a guarded mind needs a brief outlet every so often. Maybe something is putting a blockade over Weinshenk the human and keeping him as Weinshenk the host.’

  Good man, thought Weinshenk. Keep at it. Help me ...

  There was a movement. The woman came into view.

  Angela! he screamed. It was you! God, how beautiful you still are. But your vo
ice. What’s happened to your voice ?

  She seemed uncertain, unsure as she bent over him. As if ... Weinshenk let the thought come through. As if she didn’t really believe he was still alive.

  ‘Goodbye, Sam. For the moment,’ she bent low and Weinshenk saw the marks of a brace on her neck. Sometime in the last four years her neck had been broken. ‘Sam, don’t forget that I love you. Don’t forget that, Sam. Ever.’

  No, no, I shan’t. Oh God!

  She leant over and kissed him through the screen. It was a lingering kiss. Her lips were warm and he realised how cold his must have been. But she didn’t flinch. Kissing the corpse before it’s lowered into the ground. He put the morbid thought from his mind and remembered that kiss.

  His first kiss for over four years.

  * * * *

  It was the ghostly kiss that did it.

  It frightened Weinshenk so much that he swung off the bed and stood, eyes wide, fingers touching his lips where, seconds before, he had felt the impression of a woman’s mouth, kissing him as if through a sheet of cellophane. Instinctively he knew it had been Angela.

  In the deserted, crumbling room, Sam Weinshenk stood alone and afraid. And with each second that passed his fear grew greater. At the back of his mind he Could hear that strange, haunting voice, calling his name.

  The room was small. The bed on which he had lain was rickety and dust covered. It was surrounded by rusted machinery. The floorboards of the room were rotten and they creaked as he walked. The plaster was crumbling off the walls and with every footfall a cloud of cement seemed to fall from the ceiling. His hair was filthy with dust and bits of plaster coating. A plaque hung on the wall. Instinctively he knew it said ‘The Good Earth’ because there was a picture of the earth above it and he had seen many such plaques with that sentiment, voiced many hundreds of years ago by some long-forgotten pioneer of space. But his eyes refused to read the words. He could make no sense of the shapes that were the letters. They were a meaningless pattern of lines.

  He crouched and tried to write in the dust. And he couldn’t. He had forgotten how.

  * * * *

  ‘Where the hell am I?’ he shouted to the crumbling walls. His voice sounded hollow in the silence. Dust cascaded from the cracked ceiling. He became aware of the utter silence. There were no birds, no cars. His heart hammered. It was the only relief from the noiseless world. A man needs noise, he thought to himself. Not too much, but some. Just to let him know the world is still alive around him. He had hit upon it almost without thinking. The world was dead around him. He was the only living thing.

  But that voice ...

  Weinshenk leaned out the window. He was five storeys high, facing on to what had once been a main street. The buildings that surrounded him were half ruined. The streets and pavements below were littered with piles of rubble. There was hardly a window anywhere that was not broken. The air was heavy with dust and no breeze seemed to blow.

  In the distance he could see a cracked and useless bridge spanning a sluggish river. There were no ships and no people to be seen. Cars stood here and there, mostly half buried beneath brick and mortar. The sky was blue, the sun, almost at zenith, bright and hot.

  Yet it was not a natural heat. The sun could be looked at without discomfort. There were none of the usual manifestations of an intensely hot body, atmospheric distortion, visual deception. It was, decided Weinshenk, weird. And frightening, but now his fear was past. It was puzzlement that filled him. Where and what was this place ? And where were the builders of these ruins? And why were familiar things like lettering so incomprehensible? It didn’t make any kind of sense.

  He moved back into the room and sat down in the corner, watching the dust settle, watching the rotting bed, the shaft of sunlight illuminating a quarter of the floor space. Everything was still. Everything was quiet.

  Slowly, Weinshenk drifted into sleep.

  Even in sleep there was no escape from mystery. It was as he slumbered that he became aware of the voice within him. It was not a voice so much as an awareness. He felt what the entity felt, he tasted the comfort, the disappointment, the frustration, the loneliness of the thing that was in his body.

  He moved through a hot fluid, everywhere dark, everywhere in motion, great moving objects, packing factories, arms reaching out to capture and destroy. Floating globules and small objects spinning madly and growing as they spun. He moved through the melee of activity, into a region of relative calm, and then he was clinging to a huge, apparently endless wall. Moving over the wall he came to a chasm, through which particles and fluid were moving fast, monitored by tiny spheres at the entrance, modified by a crystalline latticework spanning the gap.

  He slipped through and emerged into the living and thinking centre of things and already he was approached by arrow-shaped objects that threatened him with death unless he did something drastic. And slowly, carefully, he changed and hid, hid among the chattering chemicals, the busy columns of complex molecules. Here he was safe and began to act.

  It was the strangest feeling of being imprisoned within the very cells of a body. Weinshenk awake, petrified, still seeing the darkness, the spinning, darting objects, still feeling the panic of the chase. He touched his chest and looked down.

  ‘Inside me! Goddam!’ He looked up. ‘That bastard’s right inside me. Hiding. In one of my cells.’ He looked down again. ‘Goddam virus! Hiding somewhere in my body.’ And he started to laugh. Abruptly he stopped. Touching his chest he looked vacant for a moment. ‘You were no more a native of Aurigae Sam II than I was. Were you?’ He felt that loneliness again, a sense of distance that he could not conceive. ‘Not even from our Universe. I wonder what you were doing on Aurigae.’ He looked down. ‘Did you fly there?’ He laughed. The laugh died and his face grew serious. He looked out through the window from where he squatted. ‘What comes next, I wonder?’

  * * * *

  A tall man with a thin moustache and very sad eyes stood over Weinshenk and regarded him steadily. He shook his head. A woman joined him, a nurse, a very good looking nurse. A pang of desire shot through him; He observed both people glance towards a screen.

  ‘His adrenalin level just increased,’ said the woman.

  ‘When you came into view,’ murmured the man. It was the deep voice that Weinshenk had listened to earlier.

  ‘It’s little things like that,’ went on the doctor, ‘that make it so hard to decide whether he’s alive or not. It’s almost as if ...’

  ‘As if?’ prompted the nurse.

  ‘As if he can see and hear and think.’ He stooped closer to Weinshenk. ‘I wonder if that man Slater is right after all.’

  Weinshenk watched and listened, but mostly he was aware of the nurse.

  She said, smiling, ‘What if I stripped off—that might cause an unmistakable reaction.’

  The doctor grinned. ‘Why bother to strip,’ he said coolly, ‘Look...’ She looked at the screen and then down at Weinshenk.

  ‘Doctor, he’s alive. He has to be.’

  ‘And somewhere inside him, something...something that invaded him on Aurigae II, a little crystalloid that’s hiding somewhere in his body.’

  ‘We think,’ said the nurse.

  Strip, damn you, willed Weinshenk, aware of only the woman. Go on ... see what happens.

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said the doctor. ‘There are so many different attitudes. Slater is convinced he’s alive. Miss ... what’s her name ... Angela ... is convinced he isn’t.’

  The nurse glanced sourly at the doctor. ‘That’s because she fancies that awful spaceman, Slater ...’ She broke off, horrified and looked at Weinshenk, at the screen. ‘Oh, my God, I’m sorry, Sam,’ she said softly.

  Weinshenk’s mind was reeling. It took a long time for the shock to wear off. Then his thoughts, his mind, crystallised again and he realised how inevitable that turn of events had been. He felt a desperation, then anger, then hatred. I’m a mixed up kid, he thought. Forget the bitch.

/>   Distantly a door opened and closed loudly. The doctor looked over his shoulder, then back at Weinshenk. ‘Hello, Stuart. Anything ?’

  A voice, high pitched but male, said, ‘I think we’ve got it!’

  The doctor jerked round, the nurse turned also. ‘You’ve got it?’

  ‘Show me,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Right here.’

  Frustratingly the three of them stood on the edge of Weinshenk’s vision, talking in low voices. Then they moved closer. The nurse held up a photograph. The three of them watched Weinshenk closely. ‘Can you see it, Sam?’ Weinshenk saw a lot of blurred lines, most of them comprised a lot of bumps.

  ‘Chromosomes, Sam. Your chromosomes.’ The deep voiced doctor smiled. ‘There ought to be forty-six, Sam. There are forty-seven. That doesn’t check with your record card.’