Part 5 (2/2)
Margle ordered the girl onto the second bed in the room where he would give her her first dose. When she stood and refused-out of incomprehension of his ruthlessness more than out of bravery-he sighed and ordered Baker to manhandle her onto the mattress. She kicked at the brute's s.h.i.+ns and struck him with her small and ineffective hands. She bit his fingers, making him howl in fury. At last he chopped her viciously alongside the neck, and took her weight as she collapsed against him. By the time she had regained her, senses a few moments later, Jon Margle was slipping the PBT needle into her slim brown arm.
Timothy winced as the stuff disappeared from the syringe's gla.s.s tube.
Polly arched her back as the first taste of PBT brought her bad dreams rather than good ones. Ti was glad she had not had to suffer a ma.s.sive dose as he had. She looked miserable, thras.h.i.+ng on the cot, fighting to hold onto her humanity, being sucked deeper and deeper into unreality despite herself. Her eyes glazed, and she slumped against the mattress, lost to the delusions that rose out of her own mind and swallowed her.
As Margle prepared a needle for Timothy, the mutant almost thought of resisting. But the Other was waiting...
”Glad to see you're reasonable now,” Margle said.
”b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
”Cliche,” Margle noted. ”I really expected more from someone as literate as yourself.”
Ti said nothing more, but watched the needle slide into his puncture-marked hip. He felt the drug hit him faster than ever before. That would have worried him if he had not been looking forward to meeting the Other. Now addiction was secondary to what he might be able to achieve through PBT.
”Sweet dreams,” Margle said, turning and leaving with the battered Baker, who cast Ti a chilling ugly look that swore a permanent revenge for what had been done to him the previous day.
The door clanged.
The key turned in the lock.
A chain fell in place.
Then quiet.
Then dreams...
This time he was lying in a field where tall, exceedingly colorful flowers sprang out of the ground, grew arms, legs, became flower women. There were reds and yellows, burnt oranges and creams, emeralds and deeply s.h.i.+mmering blues. The petals turned into hair of the same color, and the women came forth, smiling, fragrant, delivered of Mother Earth. But one of the flowers bloomed and was transformed into the Other. Dream Timothy rose from his blossom bed and approached the spectral figure. Closer... closer... the Other seemed to have more solidity now. They touched... and meshed. And the Other was within him. And...
... He woke again, his mind crystal clear as he laid on his bed in the bas.e.m.e.nt room of the house.
He was aware of thoughts that were not his own. He expanded his mind, realized he was picking up Polly's emanations, was experiencing her dreams as if they were his. She was being thrust through hideous nightmares in which her beautiful face had been disfigured by acid...
He extended his mind further.
He soared into a cl.u.s.ter of thoughts he recognized immediately as Jon Margle's. They s.h.i.+fted about him like colored neon tubes, flashes of amber and rouge and cinnabar, sparklings of silver and great pulsing clouds of muddy brown.
He s.h.i.+fted...
And the next mind was Baker's. It was a vast, unbroken whiteness. Along the rim of the featureless plain were flashes of blood-colored lightning, thoughts of hideous, terrifying savageness. But the orderly, solid white paved over all else.
He let his mind return to the bas.e.m.e.nt room, into his own body once more. He was just in time to hear Polly scream...
She thrashed on the bed and clawed desperately at the sheets as one of her dream phantoms chased her down imaginary corridors. He wished there were something he could do for her, and he was maddened by the thought that, had he had more experience with his developing psi power, he might have been able to reach into her mind and counter the dark visions that plagued her.
Then he thought of the door and what he should have done immediately. He sent his psionic power to it, sent it into the lock to unkey it...
... And the Other pa.s.sed through him, returning him to the world of the PBT delusions and the insubstantial form of Dream Timothy. Again, the mes.h.i.+ng had not been complete. He wondered, agonizingly, how long it would require to solidify the uniting of his two parts. He did not want to think about the possibility of that never transpiring. He allowed the illusions to entertain him...
But they had lost something of their color and texture and were little better than a senso-theater show now. Time and again he found himself waking into reality for short moments, listening to Polly thras.h.i.+ng at the demons that tormented her. As he watched her and thought about what they were trying to do to her-and what they had already done by trampling her innocence irretrievably into the bottom of her soul-he wondered if he could kill them. Not as he had killed Klaus Margle and the two gunmen with him that night so long ago-this time, he wondered if he would be able to torture them a little first, if his hatred had grown that bitter...
CHAPTER 10.
Timothy woke before the girl and was forced to lie there, listening to her squeals of terror, her cries for help. When she did wake, she was so exhausted she fell into a sound sleep until it was necessary for him to rouse her when supper arrived. As they ate, they talked, and Timothy was tempted, several times, to reveal the thread of the chance they had: his developing psionic abilities. She needed rea.s.surance, for she was terribly depressed now. But he had no way of knowing if the room were bugged or not, and he wasn't anxious to let the Brethren know they might be destroying themselves rather than him by administering the PBT.
As they were finis.h.i.+ng the meal, Polly heard the familiar two sets of footsteps approaching their door. ”Margle and that beast?” she asked.
He nodded. ”Two doses a day.”
Her eyes widened. ”But at two a day, you don't have any time to hold onto reality. You're either drugged or sleeping it off.”
”That's it,” he said. He didn't tell her that he had been eagerly awaiting this dose, wanting a chance to meet the Other again.
She tried to resist Jon Margle, but only earned herself a series of stinging slaps across the face and a more brutal injection than she might otherwise have received.
Timothy was the model of docility, and Margle enjoyed that, smiling at him rather smugly and making the injection a gentle one. Then he turned and was gone, two pair of feet on the floor, the slam of the door, the rattle of the key in the lock. The ritual had, by this time, almost a religious significance.
Polly moaned, but not unpleasantly.
Timothy closed his eye and relaxed. There was a light-headedness, followed by a feeling of floating above the bed without benefit of his mobility system. Then the drug thrust him out of that bas.e.m.e.nt room and into a field of bright flowers...
The Other was waiting. He stood a dozen feet away, his hands in his pockets, eyes staring intensely at Dream Timothy. He was both a welcome and a frightening specter.
The flowers, this time, did not change into women.
They swayed in the soft breeze, the odors of them sweet, almost rotten-sweet as they came to him.
The Other drifted forward.
Dream Timothy did not make any effort to to rush forth to meet him, for he was somehow aware that it was not necessary. The meeting about to transpire, the mes.h.i.+ng of two into one, was inevitable. rush forth to meet him, for he was somehow aware that it was not necessary. The meeting about to transpire, the mes.h.i.+ng of two into one, was inevitable.
Closer...
”They are trying to do to you what the military tried to do so long ago,” the Other said. ”Do you understand that?” It was the first time he had spoken.
”I know,” Timothy said.
”They're trying to make you helpless again. It's the way of the world. Governments proceed the same way against subjects, man against man. They want to remove every vestige of self-respect from you and instill in you a doubt of your own abilities and a fuzziness of purpose.”
”I know.”
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