Anti - Man Page 5

  Next, I led Him back upstairs and showed Him the pantry where Harry kept about two hundred cans of various fruits, vegetables, and meats. At one time, when World Authority was threatened with a power crisis and looked as if it might topple at any moment, Harry had rented the cabin and had fixed it up as the perfect bomb shelter here in the Alaskan polar winds that would be relatively free from fallout. He had never quite gotten over the fear of a world holocaust, and he kept his pantry regularly stocked against it, though the present solidarity of World Authority seemed perma­nent.

  “Take out everything you will need to keep you for three days,” He said. “I’ll take all that’s left plus the beef down there in the cellar.”

  “You’re going to need all that?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Maybe more.”

  “More?” ,

  “I can’t really say yet. Not until I’m farther along with the changes. But you might have to go hunting for me, Jacob. Can you hunt?”

  “I’ve done a little. Mostly gamebirds, though. Duck, pheasant, a bit of turkey. And it has been three or four years since I’ve even been out for those. What would I hunt here?”

  “Well, we’ve seen that there are wolves. Geese, if it’s that time of the year. Rabbits. I understand the park is noted for its elk herds and its white-tailed deer.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious,” He said.

  “Let’s see you eat what you have here first. That should take a month. If you manage that, then we’ll talk about hunting.”

  I went to the window to check the weather. It was still snowing hard, and there did not appear to be any breaks in the cloud cover. The wind was whipping up the white stuff and jamming it against the cabin in dandy drifts. I was all for a blizzard. Aesthetically, I enjoyed the beauty of it. Also, and more importantly, it was unlikely that a search of the park could be initiated now even if some bright young World Authority execu­tive candidate had thought of it. Helicopters couldn’t move in that soup, and foot parties could easily get separated and lost. It was snowing much harder than before. The wind seemed strong enough to snap the towering pines all around us. Satisfied that we would not be interrupted by any nasty WA patrols, I went into one of the two bedrooms, stripped, and fell into bed. I didn’t even mind that there were no sheets, just the spread. For all I knew, I could have been in the Astor, high up in the best suite available, curled on a five-thousand-dollar bed.

  I had bad dreams. Real bad.

  I was running through a dark, thick, silent forest in the first dream, pursued by some nameless, faceless hulk that moaned as it crashed through the brush. Several times, its long, thick fingers touched the nape of my neck, tried to draw me into its murderous grasp. Each time, I would have to double my speed to put more ground between us. But the night wore on and on, and the beast was tiring more slowly than I. It would get me. I knew it. As I ran, I screamed ... In another dream, I was in an old, many-roomed castle at midnight, again pursued by something nameless that breathed heavily, chasing me from room to room, gurgling thickly in its throat and chuckling now and then when it almost trapped me in a deadend hallway or on a stair when I tripped and fell.

  But the dreams failed to wake me. I woke naturally that evening, having slept the morning and afternoon through, with a faint sense of nausea from the unreal exertion of my nightmare chases. I felt a moment of terror as I realized I had allowed myself to sleep so soundly with the enemy breathing down our necks. Then I remembered the snow and slowed my heartbeat by deep breathing and conscious effort. I dressed and went into the living room. He was nowhere in sight, I called His name. There was no answer.

  He’s gone, I thought.

  I had been expecting it all along, ever since that moment when we took flight from the laboratories. All along the line, I had been loking for Him to leave me high and dry, to strike out on His own. It was that concealed facet of His personality that gave me such pessimistic visions. I wondered if that secret portion of His soul knew that He did not need me, that He was, in fact, superior and needed no one. Now He was gone. Now it had happened. I felt a curious mixture of sadness and relief. I could go back now, give myself up. What would they do to me? Jail? Death? Conceivably noth­ing? It would be interesting to find out. I decided to get something to eat and then to leave for the trek back to the main gate, back to Cantwell, back to New York and the World Authority labs. I walked into the kitchen —and found Him.

  He had changed.

  Changed . . .

  “What the hell—“ I began, backing toward the door, my heart laboring, my lungs momentarily forgetting their function.

  “It’s all right, Jacob,” He said. His voice was deeper and just a little difficult to understand. Still, it was parental, soothing, reassuring.

  “All right?” I asked, looking Him over. The floor was littered with nearly two hundred empty cans. He must have been eating steadily since I went to bed that morn­ing. Every can seemed to have been licked clean; there was no residue in any of them. He squatted on the floor in the middle of the tin mess, half again as large as when I had left Him. He had gained a good hundred and twenty-five pounds, maybe more. There was vir­tually no distinction between His head and neck, just one solid mass that connected with His shoulders. He had His shirt and trousers off, quite naked. Of course, He could never have fitted in them now. His chest was ringed with folds of tissue, though it was muscle and not fat. His arms were huge, as big around as gallon jugs at the biceps and a good eleven or twelve inches at the wrists. His manhood was lost in pouches of muscle that made Him sexless, hung between His legs Me some grotesquerie of Nature. His legs were swollen pillars now, shiny like sausages. The bones of His knees were invisible, padded beneath pounds of muscle that must surely hinder the use of the joint. His feet were buckets, the toes like fat cucumbers painted a flesh color, the nails engulfed by flesh, peeking out only here and there.

  I had the feeling that I was in some small, tasteless carnival sideshow gawking at the strangest freak to come down the pike in centuries. Come and See Muscle-man! the signs would read outside the tent. So Bound With Muscles He Can Barely Move! Something To Tell Your Grandchildren About! One of the Marvels of the Modern Age!

  He laughed. It was a fat, unpleasant chuckling sound far down in the tight mass of His throat. “Jacob, Jacob, Jacob,” He crooned. “Have faith. I told you I was changing.”

  “But whatever good is a change like this?” I could not take my eyes from Him, for I did not know if I could pull them back again once I had looked away. It was like the sensation you feel at the scene of a bad accident where parts of bodies are strewn around like old weeds. You do not want to look, but you are transfixed, know­ing you must look if only to grasp for a short while the immediacy of Death.

  “This is only an intermediate step, Jacob. This form is no good at all. It is what I am heading for that will matter, that will be important. Can you understand that? Or am I making no sense at all?”

  “I don’t know,” I said quite honestly. “What is it that you are heading towards?”

  “You’ll see,” He said. “You’ll see, Jacob.”

  “How did you manage to gain all this—tissue in so few hours? And from just a couple of hundred cans of fruit and vegetables?” Medical curiosity again. It all started with Harry giving me that doctor play kit when I was a toddler.

  “My system,” He said. “My system doesn’t waste anything. It employs nearly all of what I consume. Precious little feces. Can you imagine that, Jacob? It works at converting all matter, not just the nutritious elements. Everything is convertible. When I take in a pound of food, I create nearly a pound of tissue.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Not so, Jacob. Oh, there is water loss, to be sure. But that is all. And I manage to contain a good deal of the water, for my new systems need it. Still, I’m afraid I had to make a good many trips outside.”

  I sat down at the kitchen table, my knees weak and trembling, and I looked at Him. My
head seemed ready to pop off my shoulders and balloon around the room. “I don’t know,” I said, still examining Him in detail. “At first I thought you were something good, something that could help mankind. I guess I’m still an idealist even after all these years. But now I am no longer sure of you. You’re grotesque!”

  He was silent a moment, very still. If I squinted my eyes, He faded into a brown-gray blob, something un­living, a pile of wood or grass. Then: “I need two more days, Jacob. That’s all I ask of you. After that, I will benefit your people. I will revolutionize the world, your lives, Jacob. I can bring mankind an unlimited life-span. I can teach you the many things I have learned. Yes, I can even teach Man to heal himself and shape his own body just as I am able to do. Will you trust me for two days?”

  I looked at Him. What did I have to lose? He was going to develop with or without me. I might as well stay along for the ride. Besides, I might be able to dis­cover what was going on in Him, satisfy some of my longing for knowledge about his lightning evolution. “All right,” I said. “I trust you.”

  “So now I have to ask you for something,” He said.

  “What is that?”

  “I have had this radio on several times today, listening for word of the hunt. It seems that they are narrow­ing the area of search much more rapidly than we anticipated. They are forming a massive search network to start on the park tonight.”

  I sat up straight. “They will think of the cabins rela­tively early in the search. If they haven’t already thought of them.”

  “Exactly,” He said, His new, deep voice a little more palatable now that I was getting used to it.

  “But I don’t see what we can do.”

  “I’ve thought. I have an idea.”

  “Which is?”

  His strange, bloated face looked concerned. “It will be dangerous for you, I’m afraid. This close to the end, I would not want to see you killed, shot down so far away that I can’t reach you in time to resurrect you.”

  “I haven’t worried about getting shot for seven days,” I said. “The first day, I was scared. Then after flying bullets became common, I got used to it. What’s the idea?”

  “If you could leave here,” He said, “and go back out of the park, you could take a flivver or rocket or mono­rail to someplace far away from here. Let yourself be seen, recognized. Then the chase will switch, and the heat will be off us, at least until they trace you and discover you came back here. But by then—“

  “Down through the park again,” I said.

  “I know it will be one helluva job.”

  “But you’re right,” I said disconsolately. “It’s the only thing we have to do.”

  “When?” He said.

  “I’ll leave as soon as I grab something to eat and get into my gear.”

  V

  I opened a can of thick beef stew and heated it in an old aluminum pan that I found in the cupboard under the sink. I ate directly from the pan to save time and dishes. I was getting so used to His new appearance that I did not have to leave the room to eat, as I thought, at first, I might. Indeed, I sat watching Him and talking to Him while I gobbled the meat and potatoes. I finished supper with a can of pears, then went and struggled into my arctic traveling gear. When I came back into the kitchen to tell Him that I was leaving, He said, “I almost forgot about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When I was out in the utility shed starting the generator this morning, I noticed it on a platform near the back wall. Didn’t think much of it then, but it will come in handy now. A magnetic sled.”

  “How big?” I asked.

  “Two-man. You can handle it easily. It’ll save a devil of a lot of walking.”

  “That it will,” I said. I turned and walked into the living room.

  “Be careful,” He called after me from where he lay in the kitchen like a beached whale.

  “Don’t worry.”

  Then I was through the door, closing it behind, and into the white and black world of the early Alaskan night. The wind buffeted me, and the snow stung my face. I held my goggles and mask in my right hand, walked down the steps and hurried around the cabin to the utility shed. The door was a heavy metal one, bent slightly because He had had to smash it repeatedly to break its lock. It rattled now, gently, as the wind rocked it against the frame. I pushed it open. It grated unpleasantly where the buckled metal worked against the hinges.

  Inside the shed, I fumbled for a light switch, found one two feet from the door, off to the right. A dim bulb popped into life, revealing the fact that Harry did not keep his tool shed too neat. Everything was stacked haphazardly around the bulk of the generator and the mammoth bulge of the water storage tank that de­scended from the ceiling like a pus sack. Back against the far wall, there was a platform of wooden beams nailed crudely together, and the magnetic sled perched there—a very welcome sight.

  I went back to it and checked it out. It was a rela­tively expensive model. It was just under seven feet long, three feet wide. The front was swept up in a snowshield curve, and the metal metamorphosed into a plexiglass window to cut down the battering ram of the wind. There were two seats, one behind the other, and a set of controls before the first. I examined the controls, saw that there was nothing fancy. Behind the second seat, the oblong box of the drive mechanism jutted like a barnacle off the sleek hide of this beast-machine. I went to it, thumbed the rotating catches, flipped them back, and lifted the lid. The battery was totally dead.

  For a moment, I was ready to kick the damn sled and to curse Harry with every four- and five- and six-letter dirty word I had in my vocabulary. That would have wasted a rather large chunk of time, considering the extensiveness of my known oaths. Then I relented and allowed my brain to do the thinking instead of my gut. It took just seconds to realize that Harry must have some way to recharge that battery. After all, it would have been dead for him, too.

  I went to the generator first and found exactly what I had expected. There was a large battery on the floor next to the generator, and a trickle feedline kept this spare constantly charged. I disconnected the jumper cables from this live battery and hefted it, staggered back to the sled and set it down. Taking out the old battery, I replaced it with this healthier one, then took it back to the generator for its session of reactivation. Now I was ready to move.

  But now there was another problem. The sled weighed a hundred and twenty or thirty pounds. I could not see myself lifting it and carrying it through the twisting aisles between the junk, turning it sideways at the narrow places, swinging it around the sharp bend between the generator and the open door. The urge to kick and curse returned. Then I won the battle with my gut and my brain was once again in charge. If I couldn’t lift it and carry it out, neither could Harry, for he was smaller than I. Which meant there was some other way out of the shed. I examined the wall against which the sled rested, found the handle that slid a wide piece of it back. I flipped off the bolt lock, slid it back, and was looking out onto the snow. In fact, the sled was facing that way, ready to move.

  I crawled into it, strapped the belt around my waist and made certain it was secure. When you are going anywhere on a magnetic sled and you are in a hurry, your life can easily depend on that strap of nylon cloth. As comfortable as possible, I switched on the ignition in the steering column. The sled hummed to life, purring quietly like a contented cat being stroked beneath the chin. Giving the controls another once-over, I put the sled in gear and pressed down ever so gently on the accelerator that tapped the battery. The sled moved forward, off the wooden platform and bumped onto the carpet of snow.

  The magnetic sled is the only end product of what, at one time, promised to be a revolution in transporta­tion. Dr. Kesey and his associates, working under Ford auspices, had cracked the wall blocking Man from the use of magnetic forces in transportation. The Kesey people developed a sled that could move across a body of water—or at least across their testing lake—on a magnetic cushion
. It was very simple, as Kesey ex­plained it, though, of course, he pared the details down to a layman’s level of understanding. The bottom of the sled was plated with a magnetized layer of iron. Sus­pended from the bottom of the sled by four steel arms (one at each corner of the rectangular craft) was an electrified wire mesh that produced another magnetic field exactly like the first. The pattern of the field waves were constructed so that the two fields pushed against each other. The weight of the sled and its driver was, in effect, nullified. The wire mesh was bottomed with a thin layer of non-magnetic aluminum, which skimmed across the water. A set of propellers, driven by an electric battery, spun at the rear, pushing the—in effect, again—weightless craft across the surface of the lake.

  Ford thought they had come up with something that was going to do away with the wheel. Then the hitches began to develop. The sled worked well on a lake, on any small body of water. But in a large lake or on the ocean, it was useless. The waves swamped it, for it rode on the water, not above it like a flivver. Ocean travel was out. Secondly, and far worse, further testing proved that the magnetic sled would not function on land. It required a surface with a high degree of give and resilience, such as water—or snow. When driven on the ground or a pavement, the aluminum was shredded away in seconds, the wire grid torn loose im­mediately afterward, and the sled came to a slamming, banging halt. Finally, Kesey discovered that there was a limitation to the size of the magnetic sled. A one-man sled worked exceedingly well. A two-man sled was slightly more difficult to handle. A three-man sled re­quired a competent and experienced driver. A four-man sled required two men and two separate wheels to control the bucking. A five-man sled was too erratic for use. The Kesey-Ford dream of revolutionizing the world suffered a severe setback.