The Fifth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Lester del Rey. Lester Del Rey
He choked on that, unable to finish. And behind the surface emotions, his mind was poised, sniffing for danger. There was no feeling of it, though he kept telling himself alternately that she had been the girl at the door and that she obviously had not been.
He’d seen her before. The tilt of her head, that unmatchable hair.…
“You poor man!” Her voice was all sympathy, and the bag she was carrying dropped to the floor as she came over. “You mean you really can’t remember—at all?”
“Not for the last seven months!”
She seemed surprised. “But that was when you answered my advertisement. I never saw you—though you did call me, and your voice sounds familiar. You sent me the check, and I mailed you the key. That was all.”
“But I must have given you references—told you something—”
Again, she shook her head. “Nothing. You said you were a teacher at CCNY, but that you were quitting, and wanted a place to use as an office. You didn’t care what it was like. That’s all.”
Hawkes felt she was lying—but it could have been true. And in his present state, he probably believed everyone was other than they seemed. He remembered the gray sedan rising to the roof—and the cat turning inside out—
Sickness hit at him. He groped back towards a chair, sinking into it. He’d almost found a refuge, and even hoped that he could find some of the missing past. Now.…
He must have partially fainted. He heard vague sounds, and then she was putting something against his lips. It was bitter and hot, though it only remotely resembled coffee. He gulped it gratefully, not caring that it was sweet and black. He saw the bottle of old coffee powder, caked with age, and heard the water boiling on the stove. Idly, he wondered whether he’d bought the jar originally or she had. Then his senses snapped back.
“Thanks,” he muttered thickly. He groped his way to his feet, his head slowly clearing. “I guess I’d better go now.”
She forced him back into the chair. “You’re in no condition to leave here, Will Hawkes. Ugh! Your shoes are filthy. Let me help you…there, isn’t that better? Whatever you’ve been doing to yourself, you should be ashamed. You’re going straight to bed while I clean some of this up!”
His head had sunk back on the table, and everything reached him through a thick fog. It wasn’t right—girls didn’t act that way to strange men who looked as if they’d come from a Bowery fight. Girls didn’t take a man’s clothes off. Girls didn’t.…
He let her half carry him into the bedroom, and tried to protest as she put him between clean sheets. He stared at the view of his lavender shorts against the fresh whiteness, while things seemed far away. He’d played with a girl named Ellen, once when he was eleven and she was nine. She’d had bright copper hair, and her name had been—what had it been? Not Ibañez. Bennett, that was it. Ellen Bennett.
He must have said it aloud. She chuckled. “Of course, Will. Though I never thought you’d be the same Will Hawkes. I knew it when I saw that scar on your shoulder, where you cut yourself sliding down our cellar door. Go to sleep.”
Sliding down, sliding down into clouds of sleep. Sleep! She’d drugged him! Something in the coffee!
He jerked up, reaching for her, but she ducked aside, drawing on the tops to a pair of frilly pajamas. “Ellen, you—”
“Shh!” She pulled a robe over the pajamas and lay down, outside the blankets. “Shh, Will. You have to sleep. You’re so tired, so sleepy.…”
Her voice was soothing, and the fingers along the base of his neck was relaxing. He reached out a last inquiring finger of doubt for the feeling of danger, and couldn’t find it. This was as wrong as the other things had been wrong—but his mind let go, and he was suddenly asleep.
He awoke slowly, with a thick feeling in his mouth. Drugged! And the sense of danger had failed him again! He swung over sharply, reaching for her, but she was gone.
His clothes lay beside him, neatly pressed, and he grabbed for them. There was a pair of socks, too large, but better than none. His muscles felt wrong as he began dressing, but the feeling wore away. The clock said that less than two hours had passed. If she’d put a drug in the coffee, it must have been one to which he was less sensitive than the average. She’d probably never suspected that he would waken.
A trace of fear struck through him, but it was weaker than before, and it seemed normal enough, under the circumstances. He fumbled over the shoelaces, and then grabbed up his coat.
She’d bring them back! Maybe they’d used her as a spy!
But he couldn’t understand why she’d bothered to press his clothes. And the apartment still puzzled him. Even if her story was true, it simply wasn’t the sort of a place where a girl like her would live. Nor was it fixed as she might have arranged a place, even allowing for what he might have done to it in seven months.
He reached automatically for the lock in the dim hall, and realized his hands knew the door, whatever else was true. Then he went out and down the stairs. He heard a babble of kids’ voices, part in English and part in a sort of Spanish. That meant that things were normal, to the casual observer along the street. But he knew it was poor evidence that things really were as they should be. He stood in the comparative darkness of the hall, staring out. Nothing was wrong, so far as he could see. He had to risk it.
Hawkes shoved past the women on the steps and headed down West End, trying not to seem in a hurry. His eyes turned up to the roof of the garage, but he could see nothing there; he’d half-expected that the slim young man would be parked up on the roof, waiting.
Then the fear began, mounting slowly. He jerked around quickly, scanning the street. For a second, he thought he saw the slim figure, but it was only a back turned to him, and it disappeared into a barber-shop. Probably someone else.
The fear mounted a little, and he found his steps quickening. He cut around the corner, where men were crowded into a little restaurant. He was heading into a dead-end street, but there was an alley leading from it. He had to keep off the main streets.
Footsteps sounded behind him.
He moved faster, and the footsteps also speeded up. He slowed, and they kept on. Then they were nearly behind him, just as he reached the alley and jerked back into it, grabbing for a broken bottle he had spotted.
“Will!” It was a gasping wheeze. “Will! For God’s sake, it’s only me. I know everything—your amnesia. But let me explain!”
It stopped him. He held the bottle carefully, as the fat figure of an old man stepped softly around the corner, fear written on every aged wrinkle. It was the man he’d stumbled into when he dashed out of his apartment.
But the fear there matched his own so completely that he dropped the bottle. The other man stood trembling, gasping for breath. Then he gathered himself together, though his pudgy hands still clenched tightly, showing white knuckles.
“Will,” he repeated. “You must believe me. I know about you. I want to help you—if there’s any help for you, God forgive us both. And God have mercy on Earth. It’s worse than you can believe—and different. It’s.…”
Horror washed over the old man’s face. He stood, fighting within himself. Hawkes felt his own back hairs lift, and he drew back. For a second, the fat man seemed to waver before him, as if his body was only a projection. Then it quieted.
“It—it almost had me for a second.”
He turned back to Hawkes, trying to control the quivering muscles in his face. But his victory was still incomplete when he suddenly leaped up.
“Get back, Will. Oh, God, O God!”
He leaped outwards, his fat old legs pumping savagely. Then the air seemed to quiver.
Where he had been, there was only a