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

sound that she had heard in the night. But there was nothing, not the tiniest of tiny noises, not the vaguest stir of vibration, not a rustle, not a whisper. The machine crouched there, hugging the floor with its solidness, its clinging metal strength; and it was utterly dead, utterly motionless.
The doctor's smooth, persuasive voice came to her: "I hope you don't mind going out the back door, Mr. Barton. We ask applicants to use it because-well, our recruiting station here is illegal. As you probably know, we exist on sufferance and sympathy, but we don't want to be too blatant about the success we're having in getting young men to fight for our cause.
Norma waited. As soon as the man was gone she would force a showdown on this whole fantastic affair. If this was some distorted scheme of Calonia's enemies, she wouki go to the police and- The thought twisted into a curious swirling chaos of wonder. The
machine- Incredibly, the machine was coming alive, a monstrous, gorgeous, swift
aliveness. It glowed with a soft, swelling white light; and then burst into enormous flame. A breaker of writhing tongues of fire, blue and red and green and yellow, stormed over that first glow, blotting it from view instantaneously. The fire sprayed and flashed like an intricately designed fountain, with a wild and violent beauty, a glittering blaze of unearthly glory.
And then-just like that-the flame faded. Briefly, grimly stubborn in its fight for life, the swarming, sparkling energy clung to the metal.
It was gone. The machine lay there, a dull, gleaming mass of metallic deadness, inert, motionless. The doctor appeared in the doorway.
"Sound chap!" he said, satisfaction in his tone. "Heart requires a bit of glandular adjustment to eradicate the effects of bad diet. Lungs will react


swiftly to gas-immunization injections, and our surgeons should be able to patch that body up from almost anything except an atomic storm."
Norma licked dry lips. "What are you talking about?" she asked wildly. "W-what happened to that man?"
She was aware of him staring at her blandly. His voice was cool, faintly amused: "Why-he went out the back door."
"He did not. He-"
She realized the uselessness of words. Cold with the confusion of her thought, she emerged from behind the counter. She brushed past him, and then, as she reached the threshold of the door leading into the rear room, her knees wobbled. She grabbed at the door jamb for support, and knew that she didn't dare go near that machine. With an effort, she said:
"Will you go over there and open it?"
He did so, smiling. The door squealed slightly as it opened. When he closed it, it creaked audibly, and the automatic lock clicked loudly.
There had been no such sound. Norma felt the deepening whiteness in her cheeks. She asked, chilled:
"What is this machine?"
"Owned by the local electric company, I believe," he answered suavely, and his voice mocked her. "We just have permission to use the room, of course."
"That's not possible," she said thickly. "Electric companies don't have machines in the back rooms of shabby buildings."
He shrugged. "Really," he said indifferently, "this is beginning to bore me. I have already told you that this is a very special machine. You have seen some of its powers, yet your mind persists in being practical after a twentieth century fashion. I will repeat merely that you are a slave of the machine, and that it will do you no good to go to the police, entirely aside from the fact that I saved you from drowning yourself, and gratitude alone should make you realize that you owe everything to me; nothing to the world you were prepared to desert. However, that is too much to expect. You will learn by experience."
Quite calmly, Norma walked across the room. She opened the door, and then, startled that he had made no move to stop her, turned to stare at him. He was still standing where she had left him. He was smiling.
"You must be quite mad," she said after a moment. "Perhaps you had some idea that your little trick, whatever it was, would put the fear of the unknown into me. Let me dispel that right now. I'm going to the police-this very minute."
The picture that remained in her mind as she climbed aboard the bus was of him standing there, tall and casual and terrible in his contemptuous derision. The chill of that memory slowly mutilated the steady tenor of her forced calm.
The sense of nightmare vanished as she climbed off the streetcar in front of the imposing police building. Sunshine splashed vigorously on the


pavement, cars honked; the life of the city swirled lustily around her, and brought wave on wave of returning confidence.
The answer, now that she thought of it, was simplicity itself. Hypnotism! That was what had made her see a great, black, unused engine burst into mysterious flames.
And no hypnotist could force his will on a determined, definitely opposed mind.
Burning inwardly with abrupt anger at the way she had been tricked, she lifted her foot to step on the curb-and amazed shock stung into her brain.
The foot, instead of lifting springily, dragged; her muscles almost refused to carry the weight. She grew aware of a man less than a dozen feet from her, staring at her with popping eyes.
"Good heavens!" he gasped audibly. "I must be seeing things."
He walked off rapidly; and the part of her thoughts that registered his odd actions simply tucked them away. She felt too dulled, mentally and physically, even for curiosity.
With faltering steps she moved across the sidewalk. It was as if something was tearing at her strength. holding her with invisible but immense forces. The machine!-she thought-and panic blazed through her.
Will power kept her going. She reached the top of the steps and approached the big doors. It was then the first sick fear came that she couldn't make it; and as she strained feebly against the stone-wall-like resistance of the door, a very fever of dismay grew hot and terrible inside her. What had happened to her? How could a machine reach over a distance, and strike unerringly at one particular individual with such enormous, vitality-draining power?
A shadow leaned over her. The booming voice of a policeman who had just come up the steps was the most glorious sound she had ever heard.
"Too much for you, eh, madam? Here, I'll push that door for you."
"Thank you," she said; and her voice sounded so harsh and dry and weak and unnatural in her own ears that a new terror flared: in a few minutes she wouldn't be able to speak above a whisper.
"A slave of the machine," he had said; and she knew with a clear and burning logic that if she was ever to conquer, it was now. She must get into this building. She must see someone in authority, and she must tell him-must-must- Somehow, she pumped strength into her brain and courage into her heart, and forced her legs to carry her across the threshold into the big modem building with its mirrored anteroom and its fine marble corridors. Inside, she knew suddenly that she had reached her limit.
She stood there on the hard floor, and felt her whole body shaking from the enormous effort it took simply to stay erect. Her knees felt dissolved and cold, like ice turning to strengthless liquid. She grew aware that the big policeman was hovering uncertainly beside her.
"Anything I can do, mother?" he asked heartily.


"Mother!" she echoed mentally with a queer sense of insanity. Her mind skittered off after the word. Did he really say that, or had she dreamed it? Why, she wasn't a mother. She wasn't even married. She- She fought the thought off. She'd have to pull herself together, or there
was madness here. No chance now of getting to an inspector or an officer. This big constable must be her confidant, her hope to defeat the mighty power that was striking at her across miles of city, an incredibly evil, terrible power whose ultimate purpose she could not begin to imagine. She- There it was again, her mind pushing off into obscure, action-destroying,
defeating thoughts! She turned to the policeman, started to part her lips in speech; and it was then she saw the mirror.
She saw a tall, thin, old, old woman standing beside the fresh-checked bulk of a blue-garbed policeman. It was such an abnormal trick of vision that it fascinated her. In some way, the mirror was missing her image, and reflecting instead the form of an old woman who must be close behind and slightly to one side of her. Queerest thing she had ever seen.
She half-lifted her red-gloved hand toward the policeman, to draw his attention to the distortion. Simultaneously, the red-gloved hand of the old woman in the mirror reached toward the policeman. Her own raised hand stiffened in midair; so did the old woman's. Funny.