"A. E. Van Vogt - Recruiting Station (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

The place was dark. She peered at the signs that made up the window display:
"FIGHT FOR THE BRAVE CALONIANS" "THE CALONIANS ABE FIGHTING

FREEDOM'S FIGHT-YOUR FIGHT!" "II' YOU CAN PAY YOUR OWN WAY, IT WOULD BE APPRECIATED; OTHERWISE WE'LL GET YOU OVER!"

There were other signs, but they were essentially the same, all terribly honest and appealing, if you really thought about the desperate things that made up their grim background.
Illegal, of course. But the man had admitted that, too. With sudden end of doubt, she took the key from her purse.
There were two doorways, one on either side of the window. The one to the right led into the recruiting room. The one on the lef t- The stairs were dimly lighted, and the apartment at the top was quite empty of human beings. The door had a bolt; she clicked it home, and then, wearily, headed for the bedroom.
And it was as she lay in the bed that she grew aware again of the incredibly faint whirring of a machine. The shadow of a shadow sound; and, queerly, it seemed to reach into her brain: the very last second before


she drifted into sleep, the pulse of the vibration, remote as the park bench, was a steady beat inside her.
All through the night that indescribably faint whirring was there. Only occasionally did it seem to be in her head; she was aware of turning, twisting, curling, straightening and, in the fractional awakedness that accompanied each move, the tiniest vibrational tremors would sweep down along her nerves like infinitesimal currents of energy.
Spears of sunlight piercing brilliantly through the window brought her awake at last. She lay taut and strained for a moment, then relaxed, Puzzled. There was not a sound from the maddening machine, only the noises of the raucous, awakening street.
There was food in the refrigerator and in the little pantry. The weariness of the night vanished swiftly before the revivifying power of breakfast. She thought in gathering interest: what did he look like, this strange-voiced man of night?
Relieved surprise flooded her when the key unlocked the door to the recruiting room, for there had been in her mind a little edged fear that this was all quite mad.
She shuddered the queer darkness out of her system. 'W'hat was the matter with her, anyway? The world was sunlit and cheerful, not the black and gloomy abode of people with angular introversion of the mind.
She flushed at the memory of the words. There was no pleasure in knowing that the man's enormously clever analysis of her was true. Still stinging, she examined the little room. There were four chairs, a bench, a long wooden counter and newspaper clippings of the Calonian War on the otherwise bare walls.
There was a back door to the place. Dimly curious, she tried the knob
-once! It was locked, but there was something about the feel of it- A tingling shock of surprise went through her. The door, in spite of its
wooden appearance, was solid metal!
Momentarily, she felt chilled; finally she thought: "None of my business.
And then, before she could turn away, the door opened, and a gaunt man loomed on the threshold. He snapped harshly, almost into her face:
"Oh, yes, it is your business!"
It was not fear that made her back away. The deeps of her mind registered the cold hardness of his voice, so different from the previous night. Vaguely she was aware of the ugly sneer on his face. But there was no real emotion in her brain, nothing but a blurred blankness.
It was not fear; it couldn't be fear because all she had to do was run a few yards, and she'd be out on a busy street. And besides she had never been afraid of Negroes, and she wasn't now.
That first impression was so sharp, so immensely surprising that the fast-following second impression seemed like a trick of her eyes. For the man wasn't actually a Negro; he was-


She shook her head, trying to shake that trickiness out of her vision. But the picture wouldn't change. He wasn't a Negro, he wasn't white, he wasn't-anything!
Slowly her brain adjusted itself to his alienness. She saw that he had slant eyes like a Chinaman, his skin, though dark in texture, was dry with a white man's dryness. The nose was sheer chiseled beauty, the most handsome, most normal part of his face; his mouth was thin-lipped, commanding; his chin bold and giving strength and power to the insolence of his steel-gray eyes. His sneer deepened as her eyes grew wider and wider.
"Oh, no," he said softly, "you're not afraid of me, are you? Let me inform you that my purpose is to make you afraid. Last night I had the purpose of bringing you here. That required tact, understanding. My new purpose requires, among other things, the realization on your part that you are in my power beyond the control of your will or wish.
"I could have allowed you to discover gradually that this is not a Calonian recruiting station. But I prefer to get these early squirmings of the slaves over as soon as possible. The reaction to the power of the machine is always so similar and unutterably boring."
"I-don't-understand!"
He answered coldly: "Let me be brief. You have been vaguely aware of a machine. That machine has attuned the rhythm of your body to itself, and through its actions I can control you against your desire. Naturally, I don't expect you to believe me. Like the other women, you will test its mind-destroying power. Notice that I said women! We always hire women; for purely psychological reasons they are safer than men. You will discover what I mean if you should attempt to warn any applicant on the basis of what I have told you."
He finished swiftly: "Your duties are simple. There is a pad on the table made up of sheets with simple questions printed on them. Ask those questions, note the answers, then direct the applicants to me in the back room. I have-er-a medical examination to give them."
Out of all the things he had said, the one that briefly, searingly, dominated her whole mind had no connection with her personal fate: "But," she gasped, "if these men are not being sent to Calonia, where-"
He hissed her words short: "Here comes a man. Now, remember!"
He stepped back, to one side out of sight in the dimness of the back room. Behind her, there was the dismaying sound of the front door opening. A man's baritone voice blurred a greeting into her ears.
Her fingers shook as she wrote down the man's answers to the dozen questions. Name, address, next of kin- His face was a ruddy-cheeked blur against the shapeless shifting pattern of her lacing thoughts.
"You can see," she heard herself mumbling, "that these questions are only a matter of identification. Now, if you'll go into that back room-"
The sentence shattered into silence. She'd said it! The uncertainty in her mind, the unwillingness to take a definite stand until she had thought


of some way out, had made her say the very thing she had intended to avoid saying. The man said:
"What do I go in there for?"
She stared at him numbly. Her mind felt thick, useless. She needed time, calm. She said: "It's a simple medical exam, entirely for your own protection."
Sickly, Norma watched his stocky form head briskly toward the rear door. He knocked; and the door opened. Surprisingly, it stayed open- surprisingly, because it was then, as the man disappeared from her line of vision, that she saw the machine.
The end of it that she could see reared up immense and darkly gleaming halfway to the ceiling, partially hiding a door that seemed to be a rear exit from the building.
She forgot the door, forgot the men. Her mind fastened on the great engine with abrupt intensity as swift memory came that this was the machine- Unconsciously her body, her ears, her mind, strained for the whirring