Fredric Brown - The Fredric Brown Megapack

He turned to his own bunk, knowing there was nothing on earth he could do for the other man, no way he could reach him through the impenetrable shell of blank misery which is the manic-depressive’s intermittent companion.

He turned down a gray sheet-blanket on his own bunk and found under it another gray sheet-blanket atop a hard but smooth pad. He slipped off his shirt and trousers and hung them on a hook on the wall at the foot of his bed. He looked around for a switch to turn off the light overhead and couldn’t find one. But, even as he looked, the light went out.

A single light still burned somewhere in the ward room outside, and by it he could see to take his shoes and socks off and get into the bunk.

He lay very quiet for a while, hearing only two sounds, both faint and seeming far away. Somewhere in another cubicle off the ward someone was singing quietly to himself, a wordless monody; somewhere else someone else was sobbing. In his own cubicle, he couldn’t hear even the sound of breathing from his roommate.

Then there was a shuffle of bare feet and someone in the open doorway said, “George Vine.”

He said, “Yes?”

“Shhh, not so loud. This is Bassington. Want to tell you about that guard; I should have warned you before. Don’t ever tangle with him.”

“I didn’t.”

“I heard; you were smart. He’ll slug you to pieces if you give him half a chance. He’s a sadist. A lot of guards are; that’s why they’re bug-housers; that’s what they call themselves, bug-housers. If they get fired one place for being too brutal they get on at another one. He’ll be in again—in the morning; I thought I’d warn you.”

The shadow in the doorway was gone.

He lay there in the dimness, the almost-darkness, feeling rather than thinking. Wondering. Did mad people ever know that they were mad? Could they tell? Was every one of them sure, as he was sure—?

That quiet, still thing lying in the bunk near his, inarticulately suffering, withdrawn from human reach into a profound misery beyond the understanding of the sane—

“Napoleon Bonaparte!”

A clear voice, but had it been within his mind, or from without? He sat up on the bunk. His eyes pierced the dimness, could discern no form, no shadow, in the doorway.

He said, “Yes?”

Only then, sitting up on the bunk and having answered “Yes,” did he realize the name by which the voice had called him.

“Get up. Dress.”

He swung his legs out over the edge of the bunk, stood up. He reached for his shirt and was slipping his arms into it before he stopped and asked, “Why?”

“To learn the truth.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Do not speak aloud. I can hear you. I am within you and without. I have no name.”

“Then what are you?” He said it aloud, without thinking.

“An instrument of The Brightly Shining.”

He dropped the trousers he’d been holding. He sat down carefully on the edge of the bunk, leaned over and groped around for them.

His mind groped, too. Groped for he knew not what. Finally he found a question—the question. He didn’t ask it aloud this time; he thought it, concentrated on it as he straightened out his trousers and thrust his legs in them.

“Am I mad?”

The answer—No—came clear and sharp as a spoken word, but had it been spoken? Or was it a sound that was only in his mind?

He found his shoes and pulled them on his feet. As he fumbled the laces into some sort of knots, he thought, “Who—what—is The Brightly Shining?”

“The Brightly Shining is that which is Earth. It is the intelligence of our planet. It is one of three intelligences in the solar system, one of many in the universe. Earth is one; it is called The Brightly Shining.”

“I do not understand,” he thought.

“You will. Are you ready?”

He finished the second knot. He stood up. The voice said, “Come. Walk silently.”

It was as though he was being led through the almost-darkness, although he felt no physical touch upon him; he saw no physical presence beside him. But he walked confidently, although quietly on tiptoe, knowing he would not walk into anything nor stumble. Through the big room that was the ward, and then his outstretched hand touched the knob of a door.

He turned it gently and the door opened inward. Light blinded him. The voice said, “Wait,” and he stood immobile. He could hear sound—the rustle of paper, the turn of a page—outside the door, in the lighted corridor.

Then from across the hall came the sound of a shrill scream. A chair scraped and feet hit the floor of the corridor, walking away toward the sound of the scream. A door opened and closed.

The voice said, “Come,” and he pulled the door open the rest of the way and went outside, past the desk and the empty chair that had been just outside the door of the ward.

Another door, another corridor. The voice said, “Wait,” the voice said, “Come.” This time a guard slept. He tiptoed past. Down steps.

He thought the question, “Where am I going?”

“Mad,” said the voice.

“But you said I wasn’t—” He’d spoken aloud and the sound startled him almost more than had the answer to his last question. And in the silence that followed the words he’d spoken there came—from the bottom of the stairs and around the corner—the sound of a buzzing switchboard, and someone said, “Yes?… Okay, Doctor, I’ll be right up.” Footsteps and the closing of an elevator door.

He went down the remaining stairs and around the corner and he was in the front main hall. There was an empty desk with a switchboard beside it. He walked past it and to the front door. It was bolted and he threw the heavy bolt.

He went outside, into the night.

He walked quietly across cement, across gravel; then his shoes were on grass and he didn’t have to tiptoe any more. It was as dark now as the inside of an elephant; he felt the presence of trees nearby and leaves brushed his face occasionally, but he walked rapidly, confidently and his hand went forward just in time to touch a brick wall.

He reached up and he could touch the top of it; he pulled himself up and over it. There was broken glass on the flat top of the wall; he cut his clothes and his flesh badly, but he felt no pain, only the wetness of blood and the stickiness of blood.

He walked along a lighted road, he walked along dark and empty streets, he walked down a darker alley. He opened the back gate of a yard and walked to the back door of a house. He opened the door and went in. There was a lighted room at the front of the house; he could see the rectangle of light at the end of a corridor. He went along the corridor and into the lighted room.

Someone who had been seated at a desk stood up. Someone, a man, whose face he knew but whom he could not—

“Yes,” said the man, smiling, “you know me, but you do not know me. Your mind is under partial control and your ability to recognize me is blocked out. Other than that and your analgesia—you are covered with blood from the glass on the wall, but you don’t feel any pain—your mind is normal and you are sane.”

“What’s it all about?” he asked. “Why was I brought here?,”

“Because you are sane. I’m sorry about that, because you can’t be. It is not so much that you retained memory of your previous life, after you’d been moved. That happens. It is that you somehow know something of what you shouldn’t—something of The Brightly Shining, and of the Game between the red and the black. For that reason—”

“For that reason, what?” he asked.

The man he knew and did not know smiled gently. “For that reason you must know the rest, so that you will know nothing at all. For everything will add to nothing. The truth will drive you mad.”