The Long Sleep (4 page)

A wiry little man in his forties entered the room. He was a foot shorter than Joel, thin as sticks.

His broad face seemed out of place on that spare body. His hair was full, combed low on his wide forehead and over his ears. His eyes were quick, his mouth pursed into an endless smile. He was carrying a black satchel, and he took quick little steps like a windup toy. His manner was far too energetic to be pleasant.

“So, you're sitting up, eh? Good! That's very good!” The doctor's voice was mellow. It would have been easy to listen to if it'd had been racing in top gear. “And having yourself a full meal!

Marvelous! That is simply marvelous, young man! We'll have you up and around and back on the job before you know it. Not as bad as I thought! Not as bad at all!”

“It's the amnesia,” Allison said.

“Nothing to it!” Harttle said. He winked at Joel, then at Allison, opened his satchel. “Soon you'll be recognizing everyone and not just guessing their names. I'm Harttle. I know you guessed. Now you can be sure. He chuckled. He took an old-fashioned stethescope out of the bag and listened carefully at Joel's chest, groin, and shoulderblades.

As the doctor listened to his heart a second time, Joel stared at the man's head. He was aware that something was
wrong,
terribly wrong, but he couldn't immediately grasp what it was. Then it registered with a bang. Harttle's hair was full of dust. A fine, gray powder lay across his brown locks, distributed as evenly as the dust in those corridors through which he'd walked in his dream . .

.

Dream?

Harttle sat up and clicked his tongue approvingly, winked. “You're fit.”

“I am?”

“As a fiddle!”

Joel now saw that there was dust on Harttle's shoulders. His suit looked as if it had hung in a closet for years and had been hastily brushed before the doctor donned it again.

“Can you do anything for his memory?” Allison asked. She had stood against the far wall while Harttle worked, but now she moved forward. She was a stunningly sinuous creature, all sleek soft lines and lovely angles.

“Probably,” Harttle said. When he shook his head he actually snapped it as if it were connected to his neck by a tight spring. “Oh, we can probably take care of the memory. Sure, sure!”

“How?” Joel asked.

He thought he could see a film of dust in the doctor's left nostril, like a gossamer membrane. No.

Impossible. If there was a membrane of dust in Harttle's nostril, it mean that he wasn't breathing.

“Hypnosis,” Harttle said. “That's the cure!” He winked at both of them. “And even if that
doesn't
work, we have no worries. We can use a telepathist to enter your mind and give you a nudge or two. Simple matter. This is the Twenty-third Century, after all, not the Dark Ages. We have means.” He looked at Allison and smiled. “You used the medpac as I directed?”

“Yes.”

“Good!” Harttle said. “Wonderful!” He used both words a few more times, bobbing his head up and down like a badly operated puppet. He took a packet of red capsules from his satchel and placed them on the nightstand. “If you have any trouble sleeping,” he told Joel, “you just take two of these.”

“I don't want to sleep,” Joel said. His chest was tight with fear. His throat was constricted. What in the name of God was going on here? Twenty-third Century? Who were they kidding? And why?

“Of course you don't want to sleep,” Harttle said. “That's what I mean. I know you want to be up and about, re-learning your identity. But it can't be done all at once, can it? Of course it can't! You must rest, eat, sleep well.” He snapped his black bag shut, nodded to both of them, promised that he would be around the following morning, and went out, closing the door behind.

Allison went to the door and locked it.

Joel watched her closely.

What was their game?

“I feel so much better now that he's seen you,” she said as she came back across the room toward the bed.

“Did he seem strange to you?”

“Strange?” She laughed. “Willie's been strange as long as I've known him, but he's been our family doctor for fourteen years. Bursting with energy. Did you notice?”

“I noticed,” he said. “But that's not what I meant. Did you see the—dust?”

“Dust?” she asked, looking down at him.

“You didn't see it.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

He realized, then, that she was undressing, and he let the conversation die like a last breath of life. She peeled off the boots, rolled down her shorts. She unbuttoned the blouse and took it off, dropped it on the floor. She was not wearing underclothes. Her thighs were warm and golden, her pubic thatch thick and curly and as black as the hair on her head. Tiny waist, too tiny to be true.

Heavy breasts, thrusting upwards, nipples stiff and long. She was the most perfectly formed woman he had ever seen.

She chuckled throatily. “Is
this
what you meant?”

“Look,” he said, clearing his throat with effort, “you better think about this.”

“Oh,” she said wickedly, “I've thought and thought about it.”

“Are you sure you know what you're doing? After all, it's almost like we're strangers, like this is the first time we've met.”

“For you maybe,” she said.

Slipping under the sheets, she hugged him.

He said, “What?”

She said, “
I
remember you quite
well.”

“Allison—”

She rolled against him. Her long legs slithered around him, entwined with his own legs. He shivered and, unable to resist, put his arms around her. She kissed him on the mouh, her tongue moving like a snake's tongue.

“And,” she said, “I'm going to have you remembering me soon enough.”

He pulled back the covers and stared at her. She was stunning, and she enjoyed his admiration.

“You're going to remember me so well,” she said, “that you won't ever be able to forget me again.”

Just as she touched the light and brought darkness down upon them, he saw the dust that lay between the ripe cones of her breasts. Not much dust. Just a trace. And then he could see nothing but deep shadows and color behind his eyes. She was over him, mounting him, moving—and he soon ceased to care about the dust.

IV

The following afternoon, having taken a light lunch together, they went on a tour of the great house to see if he could remember anything of it. There were sixteen rooms and four baths. Each room was large and airy. The furniture was elegant and expensive, though too decorative and heavily carved for Joel's taste. And all of it was new to him.

Two servants saw to Henry Galing's comfort. One of them was a handyman and male cook, Richard, who was nearly Joel's size. He was a quiet, almost shy Nordic type with white-blond hair and even features, eyes gray and steady. His bleak smile contained no humor, and beneath the surface servility there lay, Joel thought, a deep pool of hatred and resentment. The maid, a young woman named Gina, was attractive in an ingenuous way. She had a clean, milky complexion dotted with freckles. Her nose was upturned, her mouth a bit too small. She blushed like a young girl, with little provacation.

Both servants were uncommunicative, and both of them were rude in little ways, insulting in an indefinable manner. But Allison did not seem to notice and was confused by Joel's references to the staff's surliness.

That was merely Allison's nature, or course. In only one night and morning he had come to know her and to like her enormously. In many ways she was childlike and naive, too trusting, too certain that everyone was as open and gentle as she herself. She was not a woman for sarcasm; she could neither deliver nor understand it. He doubted that she ever got angry with anyone no matter how much justification there might be; her relationship with the world was joyous, fundamental, and deeply physical. She was aware of beauty in everything she saw, and she spent a great deal of time pointing out to him the loveliness in some bit of daily life which he had not seen himself. If the servants were somewhat rude and, beneath a thin surface of servility, resentful, Allison would think of them, in their silence, as being only shy and self-conscious.

Yet, even with her at his side, he felt that the house was cold and empty, as desolate as if no one actually lived in it. Not for the first time since he'd awakened here, he thought of a stage play, an elaborate but hollow production . . . Here and there he saw pieces of furniture skinned with dust while the rest of the room looked freshly polished, and he remembered, on such occasions, the dust on Dr. William Harttle . . .

He also remembered the dust on Allison's breasts, and he trembled uncontrollably, possessed by a fear which he could not pin down and examine. He said nothing to her about it, for he was afraid of what she might say. Was this all an illusion—or was he simply insane? He wondered . . . And then she would touch him, hold his hand, say something to draw his attention—and such incon-gruities as the dust would escape his notice for a time.

In the den, as they stood by the window and watched the rain slice through a grove of pine trees at the end of the south lawn, he said, “Where did I fall and hurt myself?” The moment he had asked, he wondered why he'd taken so long to pose the question; it was as if he'd been programmed
not
to ask.

Her face paled. “It was awful.”

“I can't remember.”

Her hand tightened on his. “You'd gotten on a ladder . . . You were climbing up to the garage roof to get Jasper.”

“Jasper?”

“The cat,” she said, “It was my fault.”

Jasper? He could remember no cat. He waited.

“Jasper was on the garage roof,” she said. “He was whining so pitifully . . . as if he were afraid to come down. You said he'd jump when he wanted, but you couldn't convince me. Then you went after him, and he jumped when you were reaching for him. He startled you and you—”

“Fell.”

“It was awful,” she said.

“Such a silly thing to risk my neck about,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “And all my fault.” She put one arm around him, leaned against him.

“Where's Jasper now?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, “probably in the woods somewhere. He isn't much of a house cat. He likes the open air.”

The explanation was painfully weak. He had a feeling there was no cat, that he could destroy her story if he pressed the point. But why would she lie to him? What did she have to gain?

Another thought occurred to him. “Why were we here in the first place? Why were we staying with your Uncle Henry when he hates me?”

“Because,” Henry Galing said from the doorway, “I
don't
dislike my niece, no matter how foolish she's been in her private affairs.”

The old man was as impressive as he had been the day before. He was wearing a well tailored wool suit with double vest, soft blue shirt, and maroon tie. He was slim but strong, unstooped. With his white hair and dignified posture he might have been a senator or a diplomat. He couldn't possibly be the president of a firm dealing in paranormal research.

Could he? No.

Then Allison was lying.

But why?

“I enjoy
Allison's
company,” Galing added. He seemed to be goading Joel. He was overplaying it, pushing, exaggerating like a stage actor.

Joel flushed but was unable to respond to the taunt. He had not known Galing well enough or long enough to be able to find the old man's weak spot. He didn't remember anything salient from their previous relationship, and he knew any reply would sound like that of a man shooting in the dark and imagined adversaries.

Allison settled the clash with an insistence that defeated even her uncle. She refused to tolerate any petty squabbles, she told them. This whole feud, she said, was absurd. They were all adults, she said, capable of negotiating their differences. She had a nice little monologue which she delivered well.

Galing shrugged, turned away from the door. The carpet soaked up his footsteps.

“Now,” she said, turning to Joel, “it's time you went back to your room. You'll need a nap before supper.”

“I'm not sleepy,” he said.

“I don't care about that,” she said. “If you're not sleepy, then you'll take a pill to make you sleepy. You need all the rest you can get.”

She hustled him upstairs and tucked him in bed. She gave him a lingering kiss which erased any sleepiness he might have had, and she left the room, closing the door behind.

He was alone with the sound of the rain—and with a renewed certainty that something was not right about this place or these people.

But what?

I don't know!

He tried recalling how Allison had looked this morning, but not even that vision made him content again. When he had tossed and turned for half an hour, he finally got up and paced around the room. He stopped by the only window and sat in a high-back Louis XIV chair, and he watched the rain sheet across the New England countryside.