John Brunner: The Whole Man

I’m going insane. I must be going insane.

He turned the corner of his own street, and put his hand on the rough concrete wall to steady himself and gulp air. And then he knew.

Ahead of him, standing at his own door, was a large white car, its roof decorated with a flashing beacon, its nose with a plaque saying police. A driver leaned his elbow casually on his lowered window; two uniformed officers were bending together to speak to him.

He could hear them. They were fifty yards away; they were talking barely above a whisper, and he knew every word that passed because they were discussing him.

Out, right now… Goes to movies mostly… Might be doing something for the Snake… Unlikely — new on his payroll, the story is… Must have gone to the Snake first, the Snake doesn’t go shopping for help…

Mortal terror welled up in Howson’s mind. A car jolted around the corner, and before the turn was complete he had fled, with the impossible voices in pursuit, like ghosts.

Ask at the neighborhood movie theatre… Not worth the trouble, is it? Unless someone warned him off, he’ll be back eventually. Wait in his room, or pick him up in the small hours.

Aimed at him — aimed at me, Gerald Howson: as the forces of all the world had been leveled at this city the day of my birth!

But that was only half the reason for his terror. The other and worse half was knowing what he had become. He could not have heard what the policemen were saying so far away. Yet the words had reached him, and they had been colored by what was not exactly a tone of voice but was none the less individual: a tone of thought. One tone was ugly; the thinker had a streak of brutality, and liked the power his uniform implied. He envisaged beating. They said cripple — so what? He’d been responsible for a death, for a gang-fight, for crime. So beat him into talking.

Howson couldn’t face the shock in simple terms: I am a telepathist. It came to him in the form he had conceived when watching the movie about telepathists: I am abnormal mentally as well as physically.

Had he even overheard what the man in brown was telling his seat-neighbor? Or had he then, already, picked up thought?

He couldn’t tackle that question. He was in flight, hobbling into the hoped-for anonymity of a crowd, wanting to go as far and as fast as he could, not capable of halting for a bus because to stand still when he was hunted was intolerable. His eyes blurred, his legs hurt, his lungs pumped straining volumes of air, and he lost all contact with deliberate planning. Merely to move was the maximum he could manage.

Towards what future was he stumbling now? Every looming building seemed to tower infinitely high above his head, making unclimbable canyons out of the familiar streets; every lamp-eyed car seemed to growl at him like a tracking hound; every intersection presaged a collision with doom, so that he was sickened by relief when he saw that there were not roadblocks around each successive corner. His ears rang, his muscles screamed — and he kept on.

His direction was random; he followed as nearly as possible the straight line dictated by his home street. It took him through a maze of grimy residential roads, then through a district of warehouses and light industry where signs reported paper-cup making and tailoring and plastic furniture making. Late trucks nosed down those streets, and he knew the drivers noticed him and was afraid but could do nothing to escape their sight.

The district changed again; there were small stores, bars, music bellowing, TV sets playing silently in display windows to an audience of steam-irons and fluorescent lamps. He kept moving.

Then, abruptly, there were blank walls, twelve feet high in grey concrete and dusty red brick. He halted, thinking confusedly of prison, and turned at hazard to the right. In a while he realized where he had come to; he was close to the big river up which Cudgels had tried to sneak his half million worth of—of whatever it was. Signs warned him that this was east main dock bonding zone for dutiable goods and there was no admission without authority of chief customs inspector.

The idea of “authority” blended with his confused images of police hounding him. He changed direction frantically, and struck off down a twisting alley, away from the high imprisoning wall. In all his life he had never driven himself so hard; the pain in his legs was almost unendurable. And here there was a fearful silence, not heard with the ears, but experienced directly — whole block-sized areas empty of people, appalling to Howson the city child, who had never slept more than twenty feet from another person.

The alley was abruptly only half an alley. The wall on his left ended, and there was bare ground enclosed with wire on wooden poles. He blinked through semi-darkness, for there were few lamps. The promise of haven beckoned — the waste ground was the site of a partly demolished warehouse, the rear section of which still stood. Hung on the wire, smeared with thrown filth, were weathered boards: for sale — purchaser to complete demolition.

He grubbed along the base of the wire fence like a snuffling animal, seeking a point of entry. He found one, where children, presumably, had uprooted a post and pushed it aside. Uncaring that he was smearing himself with mud by crawling through the gap, he twisted under the wire and made his way to the shelter of the ruin.

As he fell into the lee of a jagged wall, his exhaustion, shock and terror mingled, and a wave of blackness gave him release.

His waking was fearful, too. It was the first time in his life that he saw, on waking, without opening his eyes, and the first time he saw himself.

The circuit of consciousness closed, and muddy images came to him, conflicting with the evidence of his familiar senses. He felt stiff, cold; he knew his weight and position, flat on his back on a pile of dirty old sacks, his head raised a little by something rough and unyielding. Simultaneously he knew grey half-light, an awkward, twisted form like a broken doll with a slack face — his own, seen from outside. And blended with all this, he was aware of wrong physical sensations: of level shoulders, which he had never had, and of something heavy on his chest, but pulling down and forward — another deformity?

Then he understood, and cried out, and opened his eyes, and fright taught him how to withdraw from an unsought mental link. He struck out and found his hands tangled in a rope of greasy hair, a foot away from him.

A stifled moan accompanied his attempt to make sense of his surroundings. He hadn’t fallen on his back when he passed out; certainly he hadn’t fallen on this makeshift bed — so he had been put there. And this would be the person responsible: this girl kneeling at his side, with the coarse, heavy face, thick arms, wide, scared eyes.

Scared of me! Never before was anyone scared of me!

But even as he prepared savagely to enjoy the sensation, he discovered that he couldn’t. The sense of fear was like a bad smell in his nostrils. Convulsively he let go the tress of hair he had seized, and the fear diminished. He pushed himself into a sitting position, looking the girl over.

She appeared to be about sixteen or seventeen, although her face was not made up as was customary by that age. She was blockily, built, poorly clothed in a dark grey coat over a thin cotton dress; the garments were clean, but her hands were muddy from the ground.

“Who are you?” Howson said thickly. “What do you want?’

She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached quickly to one side and picked up a paper bag, turning it so that he could see through the mouth of it. Inside there were crusts of bread, a chunk of cheese, two bruised apples. Puzzled, Howson looked from the food to her face, wondering why she was gesturing to him, moving her thick lips in a pantomime of eating but not saying anything.