Read Ebook: Nightmare tower by Merwin Sam

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Ebook has 410 lines and 24905 words, and 9 pages

Lynne stirred uneasily on her plastomat. She knew she was there, felt sure she was not asleep. Yet the dream persisted, holding her in a grip that was tighter than reality.

She was alone in a strange crystaline chamber, high, high up in a strange crystaline tower. Thanks to the fact there was no metal in its construction, nowhere was there rust. Yet her chamber, like the tower itself, showed definite signs of age and ruin.

An irregular segment of one wall had been penetrated by a missile of some sort and patched with plastic spray to keep out the thin, chill, unending wind. On lower levels, she knew, were larger scars of long-forgotten destruction. Just above the transparent arched ceiling what had been an elaborate tracery of gleaming flying buttresses, their functional purpose long since lost, stood precariously in a pattern of ruin.

Here and there about her, other surviving towers of the city rose in more serious stages of decay. And far below, on the windswept square, huddled the gleaming egg-shaped shelters of the Earthfolk. Beyond the city area the red desert and green oases stippled off to the dark horizon or advanced to invade the steep scarp of the far bank of the great canal.

Lynne was alone in a tower on Mars. Instruments, strange to her eyes but stamped with the familiar patterns of Earthly design and manufacture, lined three walls of the chamber. She knew she should take the downlift and return to the tiny cluster of Earth-dwellings in the court below, that her tour of duty was ended.

Yet she could not leave. Voices whispered within her head and tugged at her emotions, voices whose owners she could not see, whose embodiment lurked ever just beyond the range of her eyes, no matter how quickly she rolled them. Voices that begged for her assistance, offering unheard-of pleasures as a reward, unthought-of torments as punishment for her refusal to cooperate.

"Let us in," they offered softly, with the mischief of the very old. "Let us in and we shall romp and travel and find new uses for your bodies. We shall live side by side within you and lead you to pleasures no souls contained by bodies can ever know. We shall...."

There was something Lynne should ask them, an answer to their Saturnalian bribery--but like their visibility it refused to rise to the upper level of her consciousness. She felt sudden shame at not being able to speak, fear at her inability to marshal needed thoughts, fear that grew quickly into terror while the all-important question struggled vainly to make itself uttered.

Laughing like rollicking imps, the whisperers closed in a hemisphere about and above her, dancing in weird joyous malicious rhythm and bottling up reason as effectively as a plastivial. All at once she found herself holding her head and screaming at them to go away....

Lynne woke up. She discovered herself already sitting erect on the plastomat, supported by hands that dug into its pneumatic surface. She looked wildly around her, noted the familiar tri-di picture of Victoria Falls on the wall, the blank vidarscreen on its stand beside the magnicloset entry, the picwindow with its familiar vista of morning sunlight and greenery outside Mother Weedon's.

Only then did she become aware that her headache was worse. It seemed to grow with each successive morning. During the day it lapsed at times to mere vague discomfort, and with the aid of a couple of syntholaud pills she was able to sleep. But when she awoke each following morning it seemed a trifle worse.

She stepped into the bathostall, which performed all functions of cleansing and elimination simultaneously, felt briefly better and got into sandals, clout and bolero, polarizing them to a gaudy scarlet, which clashed with her fair coloring but expressed her mood of defiance, not only at her own ailments but the personal treachery of Janet and the waverability of Ray Cornell.

Mother Weedon smiled approval of this gay gesture when Lynne took her place at the breakfast table. "I'm glad you're feeling better, Lynne," she said. "I've been worried about you lately."

"Really putting it on, aren't you, honey?" Janet asked with a trace of resentment. She had polarized her own costume to a soft pink, which was washed out by Lynne's bold color-scheme. Nor could she change it during the day without revealing her defeat.

"Delicious!" exclaimed Ray, ogling her with delight and pouring paprisal instead of sucral on his Helthplankton.

Lynne laughed as she hadn't laughed in days. She wondered why she felt so suddenly light-hearted and happy, especially after her waking nightmare. Then, suddenly, she realised she was utterly unaware of what the others were thinking. She was no longer telepathic. She was normal once more!

However, it required no telepathic powers to sense that Ray was in a sadly shattered state over whatever had happened between Janet and himself on their date the night before. Lynne surmised that her rival had enticed Ray into full courtship, that he was now suffering from remorse, revulsion and a resurgence of desire for herself.

She wondered why she didn't care, then realised that Janet was no longer her rival. Ray was a nice boy, a highly trained and talented boy--but she wasn't in love with him any more. There were, she thought, probably half a billion unattached males in the world at any given moment, many of them far more interesting and attractive than Ray Cornell. All she had to do was look for them....

Headache and nightmare receded further with each mouthful of breakfast she ate. Her appetite was back and she kidded brightly with a miserable Ray and a rather sullen and suspicious Janet all the way to the brain-station. And then things began to happen that shattered her new-found adjustment.

She was barred from entry to the studioff. The electroscreen admitted Ray and Janet as usual but remained an invisible wall that refused her admittance. She was no longer keyed to the group-machine. Before she could try again a magnovox said, "Please report to Integration Chief on Floor Eighty. Please report to Integration Chief on...."

Ray looked scared. Disruption of a team during working hours was an emotional shock. Even Janet showed traces of fright. But she managed a grin and said, "Give him the old treatment, Lynne, and you can't lose." She accompanied the remark with a thoroughly carnal bump.

Lynne said nothing, being incapable of speech. She turned and made her way to the mobilramp, had a sudden vivid recollection of the older but far more efficient lift on the Martian tower in her dream. She felt sick to her stomach and her headache was thumping again.

She had never been on the eightieth floor before--it was reserved for guiding geniuses, who had no time for mere group-machine members except in case of trouble. Lynne wondered what she had done as she entered a room with walls of soft rolling colors.

The man on the couch, a tall lean saturnine man with dark eyes that seemed to read right through her from out of a long lined white face, didn't leave her long in doubt. He said, "Miss Fenlay, I'm afraid I have bad news for you. As a result of your amazing performance yesterday your usefulness as a group-machine worker is ended."

"But I was right," she protested. "I had the first zero-variation in integration history."

"You needn't be so frightened," he said more gently. "I know this must be a severe emotional shock. You were right--by the machine. We need human factors in cybernetics to show us where the machines are wrong, not where they are right. To come up with two successive zero-variant answers implies some sort of rapport with the machine itself. We can't afford to take further chances."

Lynne sat down abruptly on an empty couch. She felt empty inside, said, "What am I to do?"

The tall dark man's smile was a trifle frosty. He said, "We've been watching you, of course. About all I can tell you, Miss Fenlay, is that your--er--aberration is not exactly a surprise."

"You mean you've been spying on me?" Even though Lynne was thoroughly conditioned to accept her life as part of a complex mechano-social integration, she found the idea of being spied upon unpleasant.

"Not really," he told her. "And don't worry. We have no intention of letting your remarkable gifts go to waste." He paused, added, "I hope your headache is better soon."

"Thank you," she said. She was outside before the full implications of his parting shot sank home. How had he or anyone known she was suffering from headache? She had reported it to no one--and the helth-check booth machine was not geared to give confidential evidence or to retain personality keys for checking.

It was a puzzle. She worked on it until she was almost back at Mother Weedon's, then realised the Integration Chief had given her no hint of a new assignment--had only suggested she was to be used. She began to wonder if laboratory test-animals suffered from headaches like the one which seemed to have led to her undoing.

There was no escaping Mother Weedon, who was enjoying a tri-di vidarcast in full view of the front door as Lynne came in. Well, the girl thought, she was going to have to be told anyway--if she hadn't already got the news from the brain-station.

Evidently Mother Weedon had heard. She motioned the girl to sit beside her on her couch and said, "Don't worry, Lynne. You're going to be fine. The trouble with you is you've outgrown your job--yes, and Janet and Ray and me too. You can't help it. You're too good for us and that's that. They'll be moving you on."

"But it will--everything changes," said Mother Weedon gently. "I'm glad you've been happy here. But your happiness has meant Janet's unhappiness and, more lately, Ray's."

"I--see," Lynne said slowly. She hadn't thought of things in that light before. But of course it was true. The first real home she had ever known was about to be taken from her and the experience was too personal to allow much detached thinking.

Like most genetically-controlled children whose double-birth had been successful, she had been brought up with functional rather than sentimental care. Not having known her parents, not having known her twin brother on Mars, she had never missed them. The teachers and matrons at the seminary had been carefully selected for their warmth and competence. There had always been plenty of playmates, plenty of interesting things to learn.

Living at Mother Weedon's had been a new and emotionally opening experience, as had the blossoming of her romance with Ray Cornell, her now-fractured friendship with Janet Downes. It was not going to be easy to leave, to tear up only recently established roots, to set down new ones which might in time be as ruthlessly sundered.

She felt frightened and very much alone, as if she were again in the Martian tower of her nightmare with only alien and disembodied voices speaking to her. Mars--she wondered a little about it. Somewhere on Mars was her twin, Revere Fenlay, the brother she could not remember. She wondered if he too were having troubles. There were stories floating about of twins whose rapport spanned lifetimes separated by the distance between the planets. But she knew nothing of Mars.

She watched a vidarcast with Mother Weedon, an unreal historical romance of love and adventure in one of the vast sprawling industrial empires of the mid-twentieth century. There was, for twenty-second-century folk, a vast emotional appeal in the job-competition, the hard compulsory physical toil, the dangers of that exciting era. But Lynne was too wrapped up in her own problem to react as usual.

While she and Mother Weedon were lunching on pineapple soup and Bermudasteak with shadbacon and lacticola, Ray and Janet came in. They pretended concern at what had happened to Lynne and the team but were obviously excited with one another and the prospect of integrating a new member of the team in Lynne's place.

After the meal Janet and Lynne were briefly alone in the vidaroom. Janet eyed Lynne covertly and Lynne said, "It's all right, Jan. I'm not going to put up a fight for Ray. Under the circumstances it's only fair. I don't know what's going to happen to me and you and him--"

"Sorry," said Lynne sincerely. "I can't help it."

Janet regarded her narrowly, shook her head. "Hasn't anything ever touched you, Lynne?" she asked. "Haven't you ever wanted Ray or anyone as I want him? Haven't you ever hated anyone as I'm beginning to hate you? Haven't you ever been human?"

Janet sighed and said, "In that case I'm sorry for you." She changed the subject quickly as Ray came wandering in, gave Lynne an unhappy look, then crossed the room and turned on the vidarscreen. Peace of an uneasy sort reigned for the next hour.

"When are they assigning your new member?" Lynne asked as the picture, a documentary about solar heat, came to an end.

"Not for a day or so," said Ray. He looked at her piteously. "We--we're going to miss you, Lynne. I wish I understood...."

"You're going to be too busy," Lynne told him. "And don't worry about me, Ray. I've already talked to Jan."

Lynne shook her head, glanced at Janet, was again startled by the blazing hatred that was beamed her way. She wondered what it must feel like to hate in such thorough fashion. She was relieved when she heard Mother Weedon talking to someone at the door.

A moment later the widow entered and said, "This is Rolf Marcein, kids. He's going to be staying with us a little while." She introduced the three of them to the newcomer.

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