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And in the next case a boy who must be Red's companion, Peter, slept on his
back, dressed in familiar homespun overalls and shirt.
There was a sudden movement up through the open middle of the silo, caught
from the corner of Dan's eye, and his head was turned to
watch a burden being lifted by a thicker mechanical arm than those that did
the preparation down below. Sammy's casket, being hoisted into place. Dan
watched his encased son go up and up, to be nudged at last onto a shelf not
far below the entrance. Not a whole lot of space remained to fit additional
specimens in, Dan noted. His mind was working loosely and easily for the
moment, moving now in the territory beyond shock.
In the box after Peter's a blond girl lay, a teenage girl in a long dark
dress, the color of youth still in her cheeks. And after her a series of
blacks began. There were almost all adults, and were without exception dressed
in wretched clothes. Through one man's torn shirt Dan could see how the marks
of a lash crisscrossed his muscled back, wounds looking no more than a few
days healed, looking still almost raw, although they must have been made more
than a hundred years ago.
And here was Oriana. Though he had never seen her face before, he thought he
could recognize her dress, and the shape of the body that he had temporarily
inhabited.
A few more blacks, another white or two, all strangers to Dan Post, and then
his son. Now he was almost at the top, the tour was over. Dan found he had
been looking for two people who were not here, the
Underground Railroad agent Clareson and his wife Carrie. Since
Clareson was not here, might he have been the one who sealed the basement
wall? Why had he done that or why had he been forced to do it and what had
happened to him afterwards? In Dan's dream, Clareson had seemed to be working
with the crab-machine and whatever master power dwelt here, in a more willing
sort of cooperation than that into which Dan had now been forced& the chain of
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thought broke up, its fragments falling from Dan's mental grasp. He was still
too much in shock to think coherently for long.
Standing on the entrance platform of curving rods, Dan's controlled body
paused, before leaving the silo, to take a last glance back and down. Around
Millie on the gimbaled table, the machines were already fabricating a new
crystal box, tailored almost like a suit to her dimensions.
After closing the dark door behind him, and climbing through the short tunnel
once more, Dan was made to stop in the basement. There his hand picked up the
trouble light on its long cord, and his eyes studied it for half a minute.
Gingerly his fingers touched the hot metal framework that shielded the bare
incandescent bulb; then they found the push-button switch and clicked it off,
then set the light down on the
floor again.
Up on the ground floor, his body walked again through all the rooms. This was
a somewhat more leisurely tour than the first reconnaissance had been. Now
some time was spent in looking at the furniture, testing the locks and latches
on some of the doors, and trying a light switch here and there. All the light
switches were turned off again. In the living room the television set received
a few moments'
study though there was no attempt to make it work and the calendar on the
kitchen wall got a steady stare.
The electric stove, the built-in extra oven in the wall, and the refrigerator
were all of interest. Dan's hands worked the faucets in the kitchen sink and
bathroom fixtures, on and off. The toilet also drew close attention, but was
not tried.
When it had again climbed to the second floor, his body once more visited all
the rooms there in turn. All were dark except Millie's; in hers a lamp still
shone. Her record player had finished its program and switched itself to
silence.
Dan's fingers turned the lone lamp off, and then his body looked out of each
of the second floor windows, one after another. From the east windows it
looked long at the staccato flow of passing headlights down on Main, and at
the floodlights of the shopping center on the other side of that busy highway.
From a north window his eyes followed with great interest the lights of a
large jet climbing away from a recent takeoff at O'Hare Field, some twenty
miles away.
His hands turned on the bathroom light; then, in his own bedroom, half-lit by
the reflected glow from down the hall, Dan was given a good deliberate look at
his own figure in the big mirror atop the dresser. His clothes were grimy from
his work, and from the struggles with his children; his hands were sore from
breaking up and carrying stone, especially those last frantic minutes; of
labor without gloves.
Sweat had mixed with dust and dirt to that his hair and form an outer mask
over an inner one, the inner one being terrible because it was formed of the
very muscles of his own face, muscles that had been taken away from him and
set in subtly alien patterns.
His body looked in dresser drawers until it found clean underwear.
In the upstairs bath his hands had only the slightest hesitation in working
drain control and faucets, getting the tub filled with water at a comfortable
heat. The toilet was tested by working the handle once and observing the
resultant watery turmoil; after which it was neatly used.
His body stripped and immersed itself in the tub. It soaked briefly,
used soap and washcloth somewhat clumsily but to good effect, then climbed out
to dry itself on a bathtowel and put on the clean underwear. Then it walked
back to Dan's bedroom and tumbled itself onto the big bed and made his limbs
relax. Dan's eyes were closed for him, and he was held there in a silence that
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lasted for eternity before approaching sleep.
SEVEN
On Tuesday night, Dan's fourth night in the old house, he was swept back into
the Indian vision, which ran its course exactly as before, and then continued
beyond the point at which its first-run showing had degenerated into a more or
less ordinary and confused dream. This time while in the shaman's body he saw
the crab-machine (he still thought of it that way, it was too big for his
imagination to accept it as an ant) descend from the flame-walled tower
through its doorway, which he saw now was the same size and shape as the dark
doorway at the end of the vaulted tunnel in his basement. And still in the
shaman's body, Dan knelt before the crab and anointed it with the foul
contents of his bark cup&
& then befeathered warriors finished binding the stripped and painted maiden
to the frame of logs, and his sinewy brown arm signalled, and the arrows flew.
The crab looked on, disdainfully perhaps; not what it wanted, really, though
it would let the people serve it sacrifice of this kind if they wished. But
this time as the girl became an ugly corpse Dan felt only curiosity rather
than terror. Reality worse than nightmares had left him numb&
& Dan came up from an unconsciousness that scarcely felt like sleep as he
pulled free of its last grip to find himself in physical control of his own
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