Ordeal by Terror. Lloyd Biggle jr.
drew a small square, marked it T for Test Room, and represented the alley with a straight line.
Dolan finished gouging the wall and stepped back to inspect his lettering. “Let’s rest,” he said. “There’s no hurry to get where we’re going if we aren’t going anywhere.”
Not until Adelle sat down did she realize how utterly exhausted she was. She had been so preoccupied with her growing hunger and thirst that she failed to notice her fatigue. The long hours of aimless wandering had left the men just as tired. Dolan’s arrows became progressively less ornate as the day wore on, and now he was producing straight lines with carelessly drawn points at the ends.
He sat down beside Adelle; Mondor had seated himself on the opposite side of the alley. Adelle glanced at them before she closed her eyes. Dolan sat slumped back wearily, eyes closed, one hand cupping his hairy chin. Mondor, whose face showed faint signs of needing a shave, was bent forward, elbows on knees, and he seemed to be contemplating the toes of his shoes. This was what the bright optimism and determination of the morning had come to.
They rested in silence for a time, and Adelle tried unsuccessfully to sleep. Then Dolan asked suddenly, “Would it be a valid psychological test to observe the effects of hunger and thirst on humans?”
“I’m sure it’s already been done,” Mondor said.
“Then psychological tests on humans aren’t unusual?”
“They’re performed frequently, and they produce extremely valuable information. Reaction times, for example. How long does it take you to get your foot on the brake when you’re driving and see danger ahead? That’s a valid psychological test, and the data tell us things like how much distance we should maintain between us and the car ahead at different speeds. But no reputable scientist would experiment on humans without their consent.”
“What stupid people would let them do it at all?”
“Haven’t there been any ads for test volunteers since you hit Ann Arbor? Scientists frequently pay students to take part in experiments. If someone wanted to perform hunger tests, he wouldn’t have any trouble finding volunteers. What are a few days without food to an impoverished college student—especially if he’s paid well for it and fed afterward. The effect of hunger and thirst on the ability to think and remember would be a valid test subject.”
“As with the number in the test room?”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose that could be one of the ways they’re measuring us. They might check us again at this time tomorrow and see whether another twenty-four hours of thirst and hunger has had any effect on Adelle’s ability to remember that many numerals.”
“‘Sadistic ghouls’ is a better description of them than ‘putrid vermin,’ Dolan said. “What other experiments are they likely to inflict on us?”
“I have no idea. All I had was an introductory course in psychology.”
“Adelle?”
“I managed to skip psychology,” she said. “I thought I already knew all about it.”
“A college graduate,” Dolan said bitterly, “is someone who is overeducated in everything except what he needs to know.”
“And a writer,” Mondor returned, “is someone who doesn’t know enough about anything for it to be useful. Maybe we should ask Adelle to apply her English Literature degree.”
“No way,” Adelle said firmly. “Nothing about this place belongs to either literature or life. It lacks verisimilitude.”
“It also lacks drinking fountains, rest rooms, and burger joints,” Dolan said.
“Those things would go a long way toward giving it verisimilitude,” Adelle conceded.
A gong sounded. The unexpectedness of it, the totally unreal impact of a reverberating tone with the deep quality of Big Ben, startled all of them and brought Mondor halfway to his feet.
“Interesting,” Dolan remarked. “But for whom does it toll?”
With dual swishes, a wall raised out of the floor a short distance away, blocking off the alley, and a section of the wall nearby disappeared into the floor. Through the new opening, an intersecting alley was visible.
They exchanged glances. “Obviously they want us to go that way,” Dolan said. “Shall we?”
“Our alternative is to sit here and rot,” Mondor said gloomily. “We’ve already discussed that.”
“Right,” Dolan said. “Let’s go.”
The maze now seemed repentant of its former waywardness, and they encountered no more blind alleys. This made them suspicious rather than grateful. They plodded along slowly because they were tired, and they stopped twice for Dolan to repeat his carving act and once for Mondor, who was counting paces, to work on his map. It would extend from nowhere to nowhere, and every time their unseen captors pressed a button and opened or closed off an alley, a portion of it would become obsolete. The maze he was mapping today would have little or no similarity to the maze they would be walking around in tomorrow, but—as Mondor kept saying—he had nothing else to do. Adelle, watching him trying to sketch the gigantic maze in a small notebook, took his grim determination as one more quirk of the mathematical mentality and said nothing.
She was about to suggest resting again when Dolan uttered a yelp. “Look!” he shouted.
He had found one of his carvings with an RC and an arrow. He rushed in that direction with the others following on his heels. They turned, turned again—and found themselves staring into the kitchen they had left that morning. Dropping their bed parts, they queued up at the sink and gulped water.
After the first long drink, Dolan urged caution. “This can be dangerous stuff, especially when you’re not used to it. I wonder if they’ve left us an alternative.” He went to the refrigerator and opened it. “They’ve restocked the beer and pop. Not the food, though. And they took the three eggs that were left over from this morning. Good thing we ate well, eh? As long as there’s beer, why are we drinking water?”
A resonant “pop” sounded as he opened a can.
“Did they leave the milk?” Adelle asked.
Dolan nodded. “What was left from breakfast.”
Adelle began opening cupboards. “They took the breakfast cereal. And the chocolate and tea. They left us only a cup of coffee apiece.”
Dolan said philosophically, “Oh, well. As long as there’s beer—”
Carrying her glass of water, Adelle went to look at the bedrooms. “They’ve replaced the bed!” she exclaimed.
“Thoughtful of them,” Dolan said, wiping foam from his beard. “They’re saying, in effect, if we’re stupid enough to want to carry furniture around in a maze, we’re welcome to do so. If we’d taken the refrigerator, I suppose they would have replaced that.”
“They didn’t make the beds, though,” Adelle said. “And when they brought the new bed in, they put the mattress on it, but they left the sheets and blanket and pillow in the corner where you dumped them. Give the goons a demerit—their room service is inferior.” She moved over to the refrigerator and looked into the freezer compartment. “There are three small-sized TV dinners here,” she announced. “Salisbury steak, string beans, and mashed potatoes. All three of them.”
“Ambrosia couldn’t sound better,” Dolan said. “Now that we’re a day older and, hopefully, wiser, do we change our plans and sit here and rot where we at least have water and beds, or do we stupidly keep wandering about in the maze and taking psychological tests?”
“As long as there’s food here, we eat it,” Adelle said firmly. “And we get a good night’s sleep in a bed. I also want to improvise whatever kind of a bath is possible and maybe wash my socks and underwear. There’ll be plenty of time in the morning