Damon Knight - Beyond the Barrier

His equipment drifted toward him as he grasped for it, half-blindly. He put on the helmet and plastron, seized the familiar shape of his flame rifle.

Other men were already pouring through the circular orifice of the doorway. “Assemble! Assemble!” shrilled the mechanical voice. Still not thoroughly awake, he aimed his director at the doorway and followed.

In the huge assembly room outside, throngs of armed Entertainers were moving. “Form squads!” another robot voice shrilled. Dar set his director to “Group” and felt himself drifting across the chamber.

The whole mass of men were already in motion toward another open doorway. He recognized the men of his squad as they drifted together—Yed, Jatto, Opad. They exchanged glances and a few brief words. “How many?” “Don’t know.”

The words were not English, but he understood them.

Then they were moving across the room; the doorway loomed up. Tensing himself, Dar dived through.

Acrid smoke bit at his nostrils; clouds of it rolled down the green-lit corridor, so dense that he had to switch on his helmet ultravision. In the luminescent glow, he saw greenskinned bodies afloat, flesh torn apart, eyes staring blindly, mouths agape.

There was a thunderous roar from somewhere down the corridor. Dar felt something pluck at his arm, glanced down and saw blood welling. There was no pain, only a dull aching sensation.

A patrol officer came darting by. “All over,” he said as he passed. “We got them. Any wounded here?”

Dar signaled him, showing his pierced arm. The pain was beginning. The patrol officer signaled a robot, which cleaned his wound, extracted the sliver of metal, sprayed bandage on it.

“Dismiss,” someone was calling. “Dismiss.” The men were crowding toward the doorway again, and Dar joined them.

The press was so great that it was several minutes before he could go through. Grumbling voices sounded all around him.

“Waked us for nothing.” “I’m going back to sleep.” “No point to it—they’ll just wake you up again.” “Myself, I’m hungry.”

They were in the assembly room. Some dispersed through other doorways, but Dar’s overwhelming need was for sleep.

He passed through into the sleeping chamber, found himself a clear space, curled up in the air and lost consciousness almost at once.

Naismith awoke and sat up with a start. His heart was hammering. His own familiar bedroom, in the darkness relieved only by the glow from the living room, seemed almost bizarre

… the dream had been so vivid.

He got up, turned on a light, stood blinking at his image in the mirror, then sat down on the bed. “Dream” was not the word—he had been Dar. Looking back on it now, the experience had nothing of the incoherence or fantasy of a remembered dream. Every detail was clear and vivid, and as he thought about it now, he could even call up things that had been hinted at in the dream itself.

The “director,” for example. Naismith absently stroked his left forearm. He could almost feel the shape of the thin, flexible device strapped to his arm. Whenever he wanted to move, in that curious place without gravity, he had merely had to tense his forearm slightly, and point in the direction he wanted to go.

That place existed. Sitting hunched on the bed in the pre-dawn darkness, Naismith grimly strove to bring back all the details he could.

There were cloudy memories of dances performed in mid-air by troupes of Entertainers like himself… a vision of a girl’s face, and the name Liss-Yani…. Naismith pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. The memories were fading.

Disturbed, he sat and smoked for half an hour before he went back to bed. Even then, he could not rest, and it was hours before he dropped into an uneasy sleep.

Sometime before dawn, he dreamed again of the staring, green faces of the dead men in the smoke-filled corridor. It was truly a dream this time, and he knew it; yet he could not shake off a feeling of horror as those hideous dead faces swam up toward him through the mist. They were silently trying to explain something; one in particular appeared again and again, face distorted, mouth agape….

Naismith awoke, with a confused sense that he had almost understood something important. At last, as he stood with razor in hand in front of the bathroom mirror, he realized what it was.

The face of the dead man, except for its green color and the lack of a beard, might have been Churan’s.

It was Saturday; Naismith had nowhere to go, but the idea of staying in the apartment, even long enough to eat breakfast, was intolerable. He left the building and began walking up the curving street toward the park on the crest of the hill.

Suddenly and without surprise, he knew what he must do.

He calculated rapidly: he had some four hundred-odd dollars in his checking account. That would be enough to take him to the East Coast, and allow him some breathing space to find a job until he could earn a teaching certificate in whatever state he chose….

His branch bank was only five blocks away. It would be better not to go back to the apartment at all.

The teller greeted him pleasantly. “What can we do for you this morning, Mr. Naismith?”

“I’d like to close my account. Can you tell me what the exact balance is?”

The teller’s smile grew fixed. “I don’t quite understand, Mr.

Naismith.”

Naismith scowled irritably. “I want to close out my account,”

he repeated.

“But, sir,” the teller said, “don’t you remember, you closed it out yesterday?”

“I what?” Naismith said, flushing with anger.

The teller’s smile had vanished. “Well, sir, if you’ll wait just a moment, I’ll get the records.”

He came back with a bundle of papers. “Here is your closing statement, Mr. Naismith—we were just about to mail it to you.

Here are your canceled checks—and here is your withdrawal slip, dated yesterday.”

Naismith stared at the paper. It was exactly what it seemed to be: a withdrawal form, made out for $412.72, and signed by himself.

“But this is a forgery,” he said at last, and stared at the teller.

“Who paid this put—was it you?”

The man blinked at him. “I can’t just recall,” he said vaguely, and turned. “Oh, Mr. Robinson.”

The manager drifted over; he was a portly young man with a pale, dissatisfied face. “Anything the matter?”

The teller explained it, adding, “Mr. Naismith claims the withdrawal slip is forged—but I know we paid it to him.”

“Well, I’m sure we can straighten this out. Howard, will you get on the phone to Jack Gerber and ask him to come over here?” To Naismith he said, “Mr. Gerber is our attorney. While we’re waiting for him, let’s step into my office.”

Naismith crumpled the paper in his hand. “Never mind,” he said abruptly. He turned and walked out.

He understood now what was happening; but understanding it made no difference to the wave of helpless anger that swept through him.

He was being pushed from one untenable position to another, like a king being driven by a series of checks across the chessboard.

Lall and Churan were making it impossible for him to leave Los Angeles, and impossible to stay. Under such pressure, how long could he hold out against them?

Back in the apartment, he realized abruptly that he still had one possible way out—the machine. If he could get it open, discover how it worked…

But when he opened the closet door, it was gone.

That night he dreamed again. He was afloat, in a crowded spherical room of pale green light. His own body was somewhere off in the darkness, lost in time and space: here was the City and the time was now.

“… only a few hours’ sleep since the last attack,” the Dance Master was saying. His eyes were red-rimmed. “However, it can’t be helped. Assume formation for Turbulent Wreaths.’