Harry Collins 2000

: The Crowded Earth

Harry didn't ask any questions. He just kept his mouth shut and

waited. Maybe Dr. Manschoff suspected and maybe he didn't. Anyway,

there was no trouble. Harry figured there wouldn't be, as long as he

stayed in line and went through the proper motions. It was all a

matter of pretending to conform, pretending to agree, pretending to

believe.



So he watched his step--except in the dreams, and then he was alwa s

falling into the yawning abyss.



He kept his nose clean--but in the dreams he smelled the blood and

brimstone of the pit.



He managed to retain a cheerful smile at all times--though, in the

dreams, he screamed.



Eventually, he even met Myrna. She was the pretty little brunette whom

Ritchie had mentioned, and she did her best to console him--only in

dreams, when he embraced her, he was embracing a writhing coil of

slimy smoke.



It may have been that Harry Collins went a little mad, just having to

pretend that he was sane. But he learned the way, and he managed. He

saved the madness (or was it the reality?) for the dreams.



Meanwhile he waited and said nothing.



He said nothing when, after three months or so, Myrna was suddenly

"transferred" without warning.



He said nothing when, once a week or so, he went in to visit with Dr.

Manschoff.



He said nothing when Manschoff volunteered the information that

Ritchie had been "transferred" too, or suggested that it would be best

to stay on for "further therapy."



And he said nothing when still a third nurse came his way; a woman who

was callid, complaisant, and nauseatingly nymphomaniac.



The important thing was to stay alive. Stay alive and try to learn.



* * * * *



It took him almost an additional year to find out what he wanted to

find out. More than eight months passed before he found a way of

sneaking out of his room at night, and a way of getting into that

Third Unit through a delivery door which was occasionally left open

through negligence.



Even then, all he learned was that the female patients did have their

living quarters here, along with the members of the staff

and--presumably--Dr. Leffingwell. Many of the women were patients

rather than nurses, as claimed, and a good number of them were in

various stages of pregnancy, but this proved nothing.



Several times Harry debated the possibilities of taking some of the

other men in his Unit into his confidence. Then he remembered what had

happened to Arnold Ritchie and decided against this course. The risk

was too great. He had to continue alone.



It wasn't until Harry managed to get into Unit Four that he got what

he wanted (what he didn't want) and learned that reality and dreams

were one and the same.



There was the night, more than a year after he'd come to the treatment

center, when he finally broke into the basement and found the

incinerators. And the incinerators led to the operating and delivery

chambers, and the delivery chambers led to the laboratory and the

laboratory led to the incubators and the incubators led to the

nightmare.



In the nightmare Harry found himself looking down at the mistakes and

the failures and he recognized them for what they were, and he knew

then why the incinerators were kept busy and why the black smoke

poured.



In the nightmare he saw the special units containing those which were

not mistakes or failures, and in a way they were worse than the

others. They were red and wriggling there beneath the glass, and on

the glass surfaces hung the charts which gave the data. Then Harry saw

the names, saw his own name repeated twice--once for Sue, once for

Myrna. And he realized that he had contributed to the successful

outcome or issue of the experiments (outcome? Issue? These horrors?)

and that was why Manschoff must have chosen to take the risk of

keeping him alive. Because he was one of the good guinea pigs, and

he had spawned, spawned living, mewing abominations.



He had dreamed of these things, and now he saw that they were real, so

that nightmare merged with now, and he could gaze down at it with

open eyes and scream at last with open mouth.



Then, of course, an attendant came running (although he seemed to be

moving ever so slowly, because everything moves so slowly in a dream)

and Harry saw him coming and lifted a bell-glass and smashed it down

over the man's head (slowly, ever so slowly) and then he heard the

others coming and he climbed out of the window and ran.



The searchlights winked across the courtyards and the sirens vomited

hysteria from metallic throats and the night was filled with shadows

that pursued.



But Harry knew where to run. He ran straight through the nightmare,

through all the fantastic but familiar convolutions of sight and

sound, and then he came to the river and plunged in.



Now the nightmare was not sight or sound, but merely sensation. Icy

cold and distilled darkness; ripples that ran, then raced and roiled

and roared. But there had to be a way out of the nightmare and there

had to be a way out of the canyon, and that way was the river.



Apparently no one else had thought of the river; perhaps they had

considered it as a possible avenue of escape and then discarded the

notion when they realized how it ripped and raged among the rocks as

it finally plunged from the canyon's mouth. Obviously, no one could

hope to combat that current and survive.



But strange things happen in nightmares. And you fight the numbness

and the blackness and you claw and convulse and you twist and turn and

toss and then you ride the crests of frenzy and plunge into the

troughs of panic and despair and you sweep round and round and sink

down into nothingness until you break through to the freedom which

comes only with oblivion.



Somewhere beyond the canyon's moiling maw, Harry Collins found that

freedom and that oblivion. He escaped from the nightmare, just as he

escaped from the river.



The river itself roared on without him.



And the nightmare continued, too....