Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“Eddie!”

“You!” she said again, incredulously.

Get the gun back ! Lenny. No more pretense now. My hand found something to hold, and the room steadied. Feeling of falling, but knowledge of standing perfectly still, fighting against the nausea, the pain. Get the gun. Reach in his pocket and take it out . We, she and I, were in that other place where the grey corridor stretched endlessly. We had time because there was no time. She backed a step away from Lenny, and I forced her to move closer again, seeing the beads of sweat on her forehead, the trembling in her hands. From somewhere else I could hear Lenny’s voice, but I couldn’t hear the words now. GET THE GUN!

“Lenny, get out! Leave. Go away fast. He’ll kill you!” Her voice came from that other place, but the words were echoed up and down the corridor.

You and I. I’ll take care of you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.

Lenny’s hands on me, trying to force me to a chair. Seeing myself sprawled across the table unconscious. “ No !” I tried to make her fall down an elevator shaft, and saw even clearer my own figure across the table. I tried to remember how it felt to fall in an uncontollable plunge, and nothing came. She had to faint. Something could be salvaged even now, if only she would faint, or have hysterics, or something, I couldn’t break out, pull away. She was holding the back of a chair with both hands, holding so hard her muscles hurt. I saw her grasp tighten and felt the pain erupt again, this time blacking out everything momentarily. Lenny… I couldn’t make her move. I slipped my hand into his pocket then and my fingers felt the metal, warm from the close pocket. I pulled it out and aimed it at Lenny. I was seeing his face from a strange angle, her angle. A cross-section of his face. A Dali painting of fear and shock. She was beating on me and I closed my other hand over her wrist, a child’s wrist. Laura’s wrist. Back in that timeless corridor. Why didn’t you look into the future too? Why just the past ?

He said I did. I repressed it. Too frightening . The image of the man sprawled across the table, clearer, detailed. Real.

Absolute terror then. Hers. Everything shifting, spinning away, resolving into strange shapes, displaced items of furniture, strange people moving about. Intolerable pain as she lashed out in desperation to find her way through the maze of time. And I was outside again.

I tried to go into her and couldn’t. I could see her, wide-eyed, catatonic, and couldn’t reach her at all. It was as if the wall that had been breached had been mended now, and once again kept me and all others outside. I didn’t know how I had gone through it before. I didn’t even know if I had.

I heard the gun hit the floor before I realized that I had dropped it. I felt the table under my cheek before I realized that I had collapsed and was lying across it. I heard their voices, and I knew that she had found her way back, but I couldn’t see them. For the moment I was free of the pain. Almost uninterested in the figure slumped across the table.

“You’d better get an ambulance,” she said. I marveled at the calm self-assurance in her voice. What had she seen while she had stood unmoving, rigid? She touched my forehead with fingers that were cool and steady.

“Was it real?” I whispered. “Any of it?”

“You’ll never know, will you?” I didn’t know if she said the words aloud or not. I listened to their voices drifting in and out of consciousness while we waited for the ambulance. Was it real? I kept coming back to that. Was what real?

Anything.