Bester, Alfred - Hell Is Forever

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ALFRED BESTER
Hell is Forever
Round and round the shutter’d Square
I strolled with the Devil’s arm in mine.
No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there
And the ring of his laughter and mine.
We had drunk black wine.
I screamed, ‘‘I will race you, Master!’’
“What matter,” he shriek’d, “tonight
Which of us runs the faster?
There is nothing to fear tonight
In the foul moon’s light!”
Then I look’d him in the eyes,
And I laughed full shrill at the lie he told
And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise.
It was true, what I’d time and again been told
He was old—old.
From “Fungoids,” by Enoch Soames
There were six of them and they had tried everything.
They began with drinking and drank until they had exhausted the sense of
taste. Wines—Amontillado, Beaune, Kirschwasser, Bordeaux, Hock, Burgundy,
Medoc and Chambertin; whiskey, Scotch, Irish, usquebaugh and Schnapps; brandy,
gin and rum. They drank them separately and together; they mixed the tart
alcohols and flavors into stupendous punches, into a thousand symphonies of
taste; they experimented, created, invented, destroyed—and finally they were
bored.
Drugs followed. The milder first, then the more potent. Crisp brown
licoricelike opium, toasted and rolled into pellets for smoking in long ivory
pipes; thick green absinthe sipped bitter and strong, without sugar or water;
heroin and cocaine in rustling snow crystals; marijuana rolled loosely in
brown-paper cigarettes; hashish in milk-white curds to be eaten or tarry plugs
of Bhang that were chewed and stained the lips deep tan—and again they were
bored.
Their search for sensation became frantic with so much of their senses
already dissipated. They enlarged their parties and turned them into festivals
of horror. Exotic dancers and esoteric half-human creatures crowded the broad
low room and filled it with their incredible performances. Pain, fear, desire,
love and hatred were torn apart and exhibited to the least quivering detail
like so many laboratory specimens.
The cloying odor of perfume mingled with the knife-sharp sweat of
excited bodies; the anguished screams of tortured creatures merely interrupted
their swift, never-ceasing talk—and so in time this, too, palled. They reduced
their parties to the original six and returned each week to sit, bored and
still hungry for new sensations. Now, languidly and without enthusiasm, they
were toying with the occult; turning the party room into a necromancer’s
studio.
Offhand you would not have thought it was a bomb shelter. The room was
large and square, the walls paneled with imitation-grained soundproofing, the
ceiling low-beamed. To the right was an inset door, heavy and bolted with an
enormous wrought-iron lock. There were no windows, but the air-conditioning
inlets were shaped like the arched slits of a Gothic monastery. Lady Sutton
had paned them with stained glass and set small electric bulbs behind them.
They threw showers of sullen color across the room.
The flooring was of ancient walnut, high polished and gleaming like
metal. Across it were spread a score of lustrous Oriental scatter rugs. One
enormous divan, covered with Indian Batik, ran the width of the shelter
against a wall. Above, were tiers of book shelves, and before it was a long
trestle table piled with banquet remains. The rest of the shelter was
furnished with deep, seductive chairs, soft, quilted and inviting.
Centuries ago this had been the deepest dungeon of Sutton Castle,
hundreds of feet beneath the earth. Now—drained, warmed, air-conditioned and
refurnished, it was the scene of Lady Sutton’s sensation parties. More—it was
the official meeting place of the Society of Six. The Six Decadents, they
called themselves.
“We are the last spiritual descendants of Nero—the last of the
gloriously evil aristocrats,” Lady Sutton would say. “We were born centuries
too late, my friends. In a world that is no longer ours we have nothing to
live for but ourselves. We are a race apart—we six.”
And when unprecedented bombings shook England so catastrophically that
the shudders even penetrated to the Sutton shelter, she would glance up and
laugh:
“Let them slaughter each other, those pigs. This is no war of ours. We go our
own way, always, eh? Think, my friends, what a joy it would be to emerge from
our shelter one bright morning and find all London dead—all the world dead—”
And then she laughed again with her deep hoarse bellow.
She was bellowing now, her enormous fat body sprawled half across the
divan like a decorated toad, laughing at the program that Digby Finchley had
just handed her. It had been etched by Finchley himself—an exquisite design of
devils and angels in grotesque amorous combat encircling the cabalistic
lettering that read:
THE SIX PRESENT
ASTAROTH WAS A LADY
By Christian Braugh
Cast:
(In order of appearance)
A Necromancer Christian Braugh
A Black Cat Merlin
(By courtesy of Lady Sutton)
Astaroth Theone Dubedat
Nebiros, an Assistant Demon Digby Finchley
Costumes Digby Finchley
Special Effects Robert Peel
Music Sidra Peel
Finchley said: “A little comedy is a change, isn’t it?”
Lady Sutton shuddered with uncontrolled laughter. “Astaroth was a lady!
Are you sure you wrote it, Chris?”
There was no answer from Braugh, only the buzz of preparations from the
far end of the room, where a small stage had been erected and curtained off.
She bellowed in her broken bass: “Hey, Chris! Hey, there—”
The curtain split and Christian Braugh thrust his albino head through.
His face was partially made up with red eyebrows and beard and dark-blue
shadows around the eyes. He said: “Beg pardon, Lady Sutton?”
At the sight of his face she rolled over the divan like a mountain of
jelly. Across her helpless body, Finchley smiled to Braugh, his lips unfolding
in a cat’s grin. Braugh moved his white head in imperceptible answer.
“I said, did you really write this, Chris ... or have you hired a ghost
again?”
Braugh looked angry, then suddenly disappeared behind the curtain. “Oh
my hat!” gurgled Lady Sutton. “This is better than a gallon of champagne. And,
speaking of the same . . . who’s nearest the bubbly? Bob? Pour some more. Bob!
Bob Peel!”
The man slumped in the chair alongside the ice buckets never moved. He
was lying on the nape of his neck, feet thrust out in a V before him, his
dress shirt buckled under his bearded chin. Finchley went across the room and
looked down at him.
“Passed out,” he said.
“So early? Well, no matter. Fetch me a glass, Dig, there’s a good lad.”
Finchley filled a prismed champagne glass and brought it to Lady Sutton. From
a small, cameo-faced vial she added three drops of laudanum, swirled the
sparkling mixture once and then sipped while she read the program.
“A Necromancer . . . that’s you, eh, Dig?”
He nodded.
“And what’s a Necromancer?”
“A kind of magician, Lady Sutton.”
“Magician? Oh, that’s good . . . that’s very good!” She spilled
champagne on her vast, blotchy bosom and dabbed ineffectually with the
program.
Finchley lifted a hand to restrain her and said: “You ought to be
careful with that program, Lady Sutton. I made only one print and then
destroyed the plate. It’s unique and liable to be valuable.”
“Collector’s item, eh? Your work, of course, Dig?”
“Yes.’’
“Not much of a change from the usual pornography, hey?” She burst into
another thunder of laughter that degenerated into a fit of hacking coughs. She
dropped the glass altogether. Finchley flushed, then retrieved the glass and
returned it to the buffet, stepping carefully over Peel’s legs. “And who’s
this Astaroth?” Lady Sutton went on.
From behind the curtain, Theone Dubedat called: “Me! I! Ich! Moi!” her
voice was husky. It had a quality of gray smoke.
“Darling, I know it’s you, but what are you?”
“A devil, I think.”
Finchley said: “Astaroth is some sort of legendary arch-demon—a top-
ranking devil, so to speak.”
“Theone a devil? No doubt of it—” Exhausted with rapture, Lady Sutton
lay quiescent and musing on the patterned divan. At last she raised an
enormous arm and examined her watch. The flesh hung from her elbows in
elephantine creases, and at the gesture it shook and a little shower of torn
sequins glittered down from her sleeve.
“You’d best get on with it, Dig. I’ve got to leave at midnight.”
“Leave?”
“You heard me.”
Finchley’s face contorted. He bent over her, tense with suppressed
emotions, his bleak eyes examining her. “What’s up? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Then—”
“A few things have changed, that’s all.”
“What’s changed?”
Her face turned harsh as she returned his stare. The bulging features
seemed to stiffen into obsidian. “Too soon to tell you . . . but you’ll find
out quick enough. Now I don’t want any more pestering from you, Dig, m’lad!”
Finchley’s scarecrow features regained some measure of control. He
started to speak, but before he could utter a word Sidra Peel suddenly popped
her head out of the alcove alongside the stage, where the organ had been
placed. She called: “Robert!”
In a constricted voice Finchley said: “Bob’s passed out again, Sidra.”
She emerged from the alcove, walked jerkily across the room and stood
looking down in her husband’s face. Sidra Peel was short, slender and dark.
Her body was like an electric high-tension wire, alive with too much current,
yet coruscated, stained and rusted from too much exposure to passion. The deep
black sockets of her eyes were frigid coals with gleaming white points. As she
gazed at her husband, her long fingers writhed; then, suddenly, her hand
lashed out and struck the inert face.
“Swine!” she hissed.
Lady Sutton laughed and coughed all at once. Sidra Peel shot her a
venomous glance and stepped toward the divan, the sharp crack of her heel on
the walnut sounding like a pistol shot. Finchley gestured a quick warning that
stopped her. She hesitated, then returned to the alcove, and said: “The
music’s ready.”
“And so am I,” said Lady Sutton. “On with the show and all that, eh?”
She spread herself across the divan like a crawling tumor the while Finchley
propped scarlet pillows under her head. “It’s really nice of you to play this
little comedy for me, Dig. Too bad there’re only six of us here tonight. Ought
to have an audience, eh?”
“You’re the only audience we want, Lady Sutton.”
“Ah! Keep it all in the family?”
“So to speak.”
“The Six—Happy Family of Hatred.”
“That’s not so, Lady Sutton.”
“Don’t be an ass, Dig. We’re all hateful. We glory in it. I ought to
know. I’m the Bookkeeper of Disgust. Some day I’ll let you see all the
entries. Some day soon.,,
“What sort of entries?”
“Curious already, eh? Oh, nothing spectacular. Just the way Sidra’s been
trying to kill her husband—and Bob’s been torturing her by holding on. And you
making a fortune out of filthy pictures and eating your rotten heart out for
that frigid devil, Theone—”
“Please, Lady Sutton!”
“And Theone,” she went on with relish, “using that icy body of hers like
an executioner’s scalpel to torture and . . . and Chris . . . How many of his
books d’you think he’s stolen from those poor Grub Street devils?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“I know. All of them. A fortune on other men’s brains. Oh, we’re a
beautifully loathsome lot, Dig. It’s the only thing we have to be proud of—the
only thing that sets us off from the billion blundering moralistic idiots that
have inherited our earth. That’s why we’ve got to stay a happy family of
mutual hatred.”
“I should call it mutual admiration,” Finchley murmured. He bowed
courteously and went to the curtains, looking more like a scarecrow than ever
in the black dinner clothes. He was extremely tall—three inches over six feet—
and extremely thin. The pipestem arms and legs looked like warped dowel
sticks, and his horsy flat features seemed to have been painted on a pasty
pillow.
Finchley pulled the curtains together behind him. A moment after he
disappeared there was a whispered cue and the lights dimmed. In the vast room
there was no sound except Lady Sutton’s croupy breathing. Peel, still slumped
in his deep chair, was motionless and invisible except for the limp angle of
his legs.
From infinite distances came a slight vibration—almost a shudder. It
seemed at first to be a sinister reminder of the hell that was bursting across
England, hundreds of feet over their heads. Then the shuddering quickened and
by imperceptible stages swelled into the deepest tones of the organ. Above the
background of the
throbbing diapasons, a weird tremolo of fourths, empty and spine-chilling,
cascaded down the keyboard in chromatic steps.
Lady Sutton chuckled faintly. “My word,” she said, “that’s really
horrid, Sidra. Ghastly.”
The grim background music choked her. It filled the shelter with
chilling tendrils of sound that were more moan than tone. The curtains slipped
apart slowly, revealing Christian Braugh garbed in black, his face a hideous,
twisted mass of red and purple-blue that contrasted starkly to the near-albino
white hair. Braugh stood at the center of the stage surrounded by spider-
legged tables piled high with Necromancer’s apparatus. Prominent was Merlin,
Lady Sutton’s black cat, majestically poised atop an iron-bound volume.
Braugh lifted a piece of black chalk from a table and drew a circle on
the floor twelve feet around himself. He inscribed the circumference with
cabalistic characters and pentacles. Then he lifted a wafer and exhibited it
with a flirt of his wrist.
“This,” he declaimed in sepulchral tones, “is a sacred wafer stolen from
a church at midnight.”
Lady Sutton applauded satirically, but stopped almost at once. The music
seemed to upset her. She moved uneasily on the divan and looked about her with
little uncertain glances.
Muttering blasphemous imprecations, Braugh raised an iron dagger and
plunged it through the center of the wafer. Then he arranged a copper chafing
dish over a blue alcohol flame and began to stir in powders and crystals of
bright colors. He lifted a crystal vial filled with purple liquid and poured
the contents into a porcelain bowl. There was a faint detonation and a thick
cloud of vapor lifted to the ceiling.
The organ surged. Braugh muttered incantations under his breath and
performed oddly suggestive gestures. The shelter swam with scents and mists,
violet clouds and deep fogs. Lady Sutton glanced toward the chair across from
her. “Splendid, Bob,” she called. “Wonderful effects—really.” She tried to
make her voice cheerful, but it came out in a sickly croak. Peel never moved.
With a savage motion, Braugh pulled three black hairs from the cat’s
tail. Merlin uttered a yowl of rage, and sprang at the same time from the
table to the top of an inlaid cabinet in the background. Through the mists and
vapors his giant yellow eyes gleamed balefully. The hairs went into the
chafing dish and a new aroma filled the room. In quick succession the claws of
an owl, the powder of vipers, and a human-shaped mandrake root followed.
“Now!” cried Braugh.
He cast the wafer, transfixed by the dagger, into the porcelain bowl
containing the purple fluid, and then poured the whole mixture into the copper
chafing dish.
There was a violent explosion.
A jet-black cloud enfolded the stage and swirled out into the shelter.
Slowly it cleared away, faintly revealing the tall form of a naked devil; the
body exquisitely formed, the head a frightful mask. Braugh had disappeared.
Through the drifting clouds, in the husky tones of Theone Dubedat, the
devil spoke: “Greetings, Lady Sutton—”
She stepped forward out of the vapor. In the pulsating light that shot
down to the stage her body shone with a shimmering nacreous glow of its own.
The toes and fingers were long and graceful. Color slashed across the rounded
torso. Yet that whole perfect body was cold and lifeless—as unreal as the
grotesque papiermâché that covered her head.
Theone repeated: “Greetings—”
“Hi, old thing!” Lady Sutton interrupted. “How’s everything in hell?”
There was a giggle from the alcove where Sidra Peel was playing softly.
Theone posed statuesquely and lifted her head a little higher to speak. “I
bring you—”
“Darling!” shrieked Lady Sutton, “why didn’t you let me know it was
going to be like this. I’d have sold tickets!”
Theone raised a gleaming arm imperiously. Again she began: “I bring you
the thanks of the five who—” And then abruptly she stopped.
For the space of five heartbeats there was a gasping pause while the
organ murmured and the last of the black smoke filtered away, mushrooming
against the ceiling. In the silence Theone’s rapid, choked breathing mounted
hysterically— then came a ghastly, piercing scream.
The others darted from behind the stage, exclaiming in astonishment—
Braugh, Necromancer’s costume thrown over his arm, his make-up removed;
Finchley like a pair of animated scissors in black habit and cowl, a script in
his hand. The organ stuttered, then stopped with a crash, and Sidra Peel burst
out of the alcove.
Theone tried to scream again, but her voice caught and broke. In the
appalled silence Lady Sutton cried: “What is it? Something wrong?”
Theone uttered a moaning sound and pointed to the center of the stage.
“Look— There—” The words came off the top of her throat like the squeal of
nails on slate. She cowered back against a table upsetting the apparatus. It
clashed and tinkled.
“What is it? For the love of—”
“It worked—” Theone moaned. “The r-ritual—It worked!”
They stared through the gloom, then started. An enormous sable Thing was
slowly rising in the center of the Necromancer’s circle—a vague, morphous form
towering high, emitting a dull, hissing sound like the whisper of a caldron.
“Who is that?” Lady Sutton shouted.
The Thing pushed forward like some sickly extrusion. When it reached the
edge of the black circle it halted. The seething sounds swelled ominously.
“It is one of us?” Lady Sutton cried. “Is this a stupid trick? Finchley
. . Braugh—”
They shot her startled glances, bleak with terror.
“Sidra ... Robert. . . Theone . . . No, you’re all here. Then who is
that? How did it get in here?”
“It’s impossible,” Braugh whispered, backing away. His legs knocked
against the edge of the divan and he sprawled clumsily.
Lady Sutton beat at him with helpless hands and cried: “Do something! Do
something—”
Finchley tried to control his voice. He stuttered: “W-we’re safe so long
as the circle isn’t broken. It can’t get out—”
On the stage, Theone was sobbing, making pushing motions with her hands.
Suddenly she crumpled to the floor. One outflung arm rubbed away a segment of
the black chalk circle. The Thing moved swiftly, stepped through the break in
the circle and descended from the platform like a black fluid. Finchley and
Sidra Peel reeled back with terrified shrieks. There was a growing thickness
pervading the shelter atmosphere. Little gusts of vapor twisted around the
head of the Thing as it moved slowly toward the divan.
“You’re all joking!” Lady Sutton screamed. “This isn’t real. It can’t
be!” She heaved up from the divan and tottered to her feet. Her face blanched
as she counted the tale of her guests again. One—two—and four made six—and the
shape made seven. But there should only be six— She backed away, then began to
run. The Thing was following her when she reached the door. Lady Sutton pulled
at the door handle, but the iron bolt was locked. Quickly, for all her vast
bulk, she ran around the edge of the shelter, smashing over the tables. As the
Thing expanded in the darkness and filled the room with its sibilant hissing,
she snatched at her purse and tore it open, groping for the key. Her shaking
hands scattered the purse’s contents over the room.
A deep bellow pierced the blackness. Lady Sutton jerked and stared
around desperately, making little animal noises. As the Thing threatened to
engulf her in its infinite black depths, a cry tore up through her body and
she sank heavily to the floor.
Silence.
Smoke drifted in shaded clouds.
The china clock ticked off a sequence of delicate periods.
“Well—” Finchley said in conversational tones. “That’s that.”
He went to the inert figure on the floor. He knelt over it for a moment,
probing and testing, his face flickering with savage hunger. Then he looked up
and grinned. “She’s dead, all right. Just the way we figured. Heart failure.
She was too fat.”
He remained on his knees, drinking in the moment of death. The others
clustered around the toadlike body, staring with distended nostrils. The
moment hardly lasted, then the languor of infinite boredom again shaded across
their features.
The black Thing waved its arms a few times. The costume split at last to
reveal a complicated framework and the sweating, bearded face of Robert Peel.
He dropped the costume around him, stepped out of it, and went to the figure
in the chair.
“The dummy idea was perfect,” he said. His bright little eyes glittered
momentarily. He looked like a sadistic miniature of Edward VII. “She’d never
have believed it if we hadn’t arranged for a se~venth unknown to enter the
scene.” He glanced at his wife. “That slap was a stroke of genius, Sidra.
Wonderful realism—’’
‘‘I meant it.’’
“I know you did, dearly beloved, but thanks nevertheless.”
Theone Dubedat had risen and gotten into a white dressing gown. She
stepped down and walked over to the body, removing the hideous devil’s mask.
It revealed a beautifully chiseled face, frigid and lovely. Her blond hair
gleamed in the darkness.
Braugh said: “Your acting was superb, Theone—” He bobbed his white
albino head appreciatively.
For a time she didn’t answer. She stood staring down at the shapeless
mound of flesh, an expression of hopeless longing on her face; but there was
nothing more to her gazing than the impersonal curiosity of a bystander
watching a window chef. Less.
At last Theone sighed. She said: “So it wasn’t worth it, after all.”
“What?” Braugh groped for a cigarette.
“The acting—the whole performance. We’ve been let down again, Chris.”
Braugh scratched a match. The orange flame flared, flickering across
their disappointed faces. He lit his cigarette, then held the flame high and
looked at them. The illumination twisted their features into caricatures,
emphasizing their weariness, their infinite boredom. Braugh said: “My-my—”
“It’s no use, Chris. This whole murder was a bust. It was about as
exciting as a glass of water.”
Finchley hunched his shoulders and paced up and back of the shelter like
a bundle of stilts. He said: “I got a bit of a kick when I thought she
suspected. It didn’t last long, though.”
“You ought to be grateful for even that.”
‘‘I am.’’
Peel clucked his tongue in exasperation, then knelt like a bearded
humptydumpty, his bald head gleaming, and raked in the contents of Lady
Sutton’s scattered purse. The banknotes he folded and put in his pocket. He
took the fat dead hand and lifted it slightly toward Theone. “You always
admired her sapphire, Theone. Want it?”
“You couldn’t get it off, Bob.”
“I think I could,” he said, pulling strenuously.
“Oh, to hell with the sapphire.”
“No-it’s coming.”
The ring slipped forward, then caught in the folds of flesh at the
knuckle. Peel took a fresh grip and tugged and twisted. There was a sucking,
yielding sound and the entire finger tore away from the hand. The dull odor of
putrefaction struck their nostrils as they looked on with vague curiosity.
Peel shrugged and dropped the finger. He arose, dusting his hands
slightly. “She rots fast,” he said. “Peculiar—”
Braugh wrinkled his nose and said: “She was too fat.”
Theone turned away in sudden frantic desperation, her hands clasping her
elbows. “What are we going to do?” she cried. “What? Isn’t there a sensation
left on earth we haven’t tried?”
With a dry whir the china clock began quick chimes. Midnight.
Finchley said: “We might go back to drugs.”
“They’re as futile as this paltry murder.”
“But there are other sensations. New ones.”
“Name one!” Theone said in exasperation. “Only one!” “I could name several—if
you’ll have a seat and permit me—” Suddenly Theone interrupted: “That’s you
speaking, isn’t it, Dig?” In a peculiar voice Finchley answered: “N~no. I
thought it was Chris.” Braugh said: “Wasn’t me.”
“You, Bob?”
‘No.
“Th-then—”
The small voice said: “If the ladies and gentlemen would be kind enough to—”
It came from the stage. There was something there—something that spoke in
that quiet, gentle voice; for Merlin was stalking back and forth, arching his
high black back against an invisible leg.
“—to sit down,” the voice continued persuasively.
Braugh had the most courage. He moved to the stage with slow, steady
steps, the cigarette hanging firmly from his lips. He leaned across the apron
and peered. For a while his eyes examined the stage, then he let a spume of
smoke jet from his nostrils and called: “There’s nothing here.”
And at that moment the blue smoke swirled under the lights and swept
around a figure of emptiness. It was no more than a glimpse of an outline—of a
negative, but it was enough to make Braugh cry out and leap back. The others
turned sick, too, and staggered to chairs.
“So sorry,” said the quiet voice. “It won’t happen again.”
Peel gathered himself and said: “Merely for the sake of—”
“Yes?’’
He tried to freeze his jerking features. “Merely for the sake of s-
scientific curiosity it—”
“Calm yourself, my friend.”
“The ritual . . . it did w-work?”
“Of course not. My friends, there is no need to call us with such
fantastic ceremony. If you really want us, we come.”
“And you?”
“I? Oh... I know you have been thinking of me for some time. Tonight you
wanted me—really wanted me, and I came.”
The last of the cigarette smoke convulsed violently as that terrible
figure of emptiness seemed to stoop and at last seat itself casually at the
edge of the stage. The cat hesitated and then began rolling its head with
little mews of pleasure as something fondled it.
Still striving desperately to control himself, Peel said: “But all those
ceremonies and rituals that have been handed down—”
“Merely symbolic, Mr. Peel.” Peel started at the sound of his name. “You
have read, no doubt, that we do not appear unless a certain ritual is
performed, and only if it is letter-perfect. That is not true, of course. We
appear if the invitation is sincere—and only then—with or without ceremony.”
Sick and verging on hysteria, Sidra whispered: “I’m getting out of
here.” She tried to rise.
The gentle voice said: “One moment, please—”
“No!”
“I will help you get rid of your husband, Mrs. Peel.”
Sidra blinked, then sank back into her chair. Peel clenched his fists
and opened his mouth to speak. Before he could begin, the gentle voice
continued: “And yet you will not lose your wife, if you really want to keep
her, Mr. Peel. I guarantee that.”
The cat was suddenly lifted into the air and then settled comfortably in
space a few feet from the floor. They could see the thick fur on the back
smooth and resmooth from the gentle petting.
At length Braugh asked: “What do you offer us?”
“I offer each of you his own heart’s desire.”
‘‘And that is?’’
“A new sensation—all new sensations—”
“What new sensation?”
“The sensation of reality.”
Braugh laughed. “Hardly anyone’s heart’s desire.”
“This will be, for I offer you five different realities—realities which
you may fashion, each for himself. I offer you worlds of your own making
wherein Mrs. Peel may happily murder her husband in hers—and yet Mr. Peel may
keep his wife in his own. To Mr. Braugh I offer the dreamworld of the writer,
and to Mr. Finchley the creation of the artist—”
Theone said: “Those are dreams, and dreams are cheap. We all possess
them.”
“But you all awaken from your dreams and you pay the bitter price of
that realization. I offer you an awakening from the present into a future
reality which you may shape to your own desires—a reality which will never
end.”
Peel said: “Five simultaneous realities is a contradiction in terms.
It’s a paradox—impossible.”
“Then I offer you the impossible.”
“And the price?”
“I beg pardon?”
“The price,” Peel repeated with growing courage. “We’re not altogether
naïve. We know there’s always a price.”
There was a long pause, then the voice said reproachfully: “I’m afraid
there are many misconceptions and many things you fail to understand. Just now
I cannot explain, but believe me when I say there is no price.”
“Ridiculous. Nothing is ever given for nothing.”
“Very well, Mr. Peel, if we must use the terminology of the market
place, let me say that we never appear unless the price for our service is
paid in advance. Yours has already been paid.”
“Paid?” They shot involuntary glances at the rotting body on the shelter
floor.
‘‘In full.’’
“Then?”
“You’re willing, I see. Very well—”
The cat was again lifted high in the air and deposited on the floor with
a last gentle pat. The remnants of mist clinging to the shelter ceiling weaved
and churned as the invisible donor advanced. Instinctively the five arose and
waited, tense and fearful, yet with a mounting sense of fulfillment.
A key’ darted up from the floor and sailed through midair toward the
door. It paused before the lock an instant, then inserted itself and turned.
The heavy wroughtiron bolt lifted and the door swung wide. Beyond should have
been the dungeon passage leading to the upper levels of Sutton Castle—a low,
narrow corridor, paved with flags and lined with limestone blocks. Now, a few
inches beyond the door jamb, there hung a veil of flame.
Pale, incredibly beautiful, it was a tapestry of flickering fire, the
warp and weft an intermesh of rainbow colors. Those pastel strands of color
locked and interlocked, swam, threaded and spun like so many individual life
lines. They were an infinity of beads, emotions, the silken countenance of
time, the swirling skin of space— They were all things to all men, and above
all else, they were beautiful.
“For you,” that quiet voice said, “your old reality ends in this room—”
“As simply as this?”
“Quite.”
“But—”
“Here you stand,” interrupted the voice, “in the last kernel, the last
nucleus so to speak, of what once was real for you. Pass the door—pass through
the veil, and you enter the reality I promised.”
“What will we find beyond the veil?”
“What each of you desires. Nothing lies beyond that veil now. There is
nothing there—nothing but time and space waiting for the molding. There is
nothing and the potential of everything.”
Peel, in a low voice, said: “One time and one space? Will that be enough
for all different realities?”
“All time, all space, my friend,” the quiet voice answered. “Pass
through and you will find the matrix of dreams.”
They had been clustered together, standing close to each other in a kind
of strained companionship. Now, in the silence that followed, they separated
slightly as though each had marked out for himself a reality all his own—a
life entirely divorced from the past and the companions of old times. It was a
gesture of utter isolation.
Mutually impulsed, yet independently motivated, they moved toward the
glittering veil“
I am an artist, Digby Finchley thought, and an artist is a creator. To
create is to be godlike, and so shall I be. I shall be god of my world, and
from nothing I shall create all—and my all will be beauty.
He was the first to reach the veil and the first to pass through. Across
his face
the riot of color flicked like a cool spray. He blinked his eyes momentarily
as the brilliant scarlets and purples blinded him. When he opened them again
he had left the veil a step behind and stood in the darkness.
But not darkness.
It was the blank jet-black of infinite emptiness. It smote his eyes like
a heavy hand and seemed to press the eyeballs back into his skull like leaden
weights. He was terrified and jerked his head about, staring into the
impenetrable nothingness, mistaking the ephemeral flashes of retinal light for
reality.
Nor was he standing.
For he took one hasty stride and it was as though he were suspended out
of all contact with mass and matter. His terror was tinged with horror as he
became aware that he was utterly alone; that there was nothing to see, nothing
to hear, nothing to touch. A bitter loneliness assailed him and in that
instant he understood how truthfully the voice in the shelter had spoken, and
how terribly real his new reality was.
That instant, too, was his salvation. “For,” Finchley murmured with a
wry smile to the blankness, “it is of the essence of godhood to be alone—to be
摘要：

ALFREDBESTERHellisForeverRoundandroundtheshutter’dSquareIstrolledwiththeDevil’sarminmine.NosoundbutthescrapeofhishoofswasthereAndtheringofhislaughterandmine.Wehaddrunkblackwine.Iscreamed,‘‘Iwillraceyou,Master!’’“Whatmatter,”heshriek’d,“tonightWhichofusrunsthefaster?ThereisnothingtofeartonightInthefo...

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