The Final Circle of Paradise

By the time the doctor came, I knew what I was going to do. I would find Eli. I would pay any sum. Maybe I would beat him. If necessary, I would torture him. And he would tell me, whence this plague flows out upon the world. He would name names and addresses. He would tell me all. And we would find these men. We would locate and burn their secret laboratories, and as for themselves, we would ship them out so far that they would never return. Whoever they might be. We would catch them all, we would catch all who ever tried slug and isolate them, too. Whoever they were. Then I would demand that I, too, be isolated because I knew what slug was. Because I grasped what sort of thought I had, because I was socially dangerous, just as they all are. And all that would be only the beginning. The beginning of all beginnings, and ahead would remain that which was most important: to make it so that people would never, never, wish to know what slug was. Probably that would be outlandish. Probably many would say that it was too outlandish, too harsh, too stupid – but we would still have to do it if we wanted mankind not to stop…

The doctor, an old gray man, put down his white case, leaned over Buba, looked him over, and said indifferently, "Hopeless."

"Call the police," I said.

Slowly he put away his instruments.

"There is no need of that whatsoever," he said. "There's no criminal content, here. It is a neurostimulator…"

"Yes, I know."

"There you are – the second case this night. They just don't know when to stop."

"When did it start?"

"Not very long ago… a few months."

"Then why in hell do you keep it quiet?"

"Keep it quiet? I don't understand. This is my sixth call tonight, young man. The second case of nervous exhaustion and four cases of brain fever. Are you a relative?"

"No."

"Well, all right, I'll send some men." He stood awhile, looking at Peck. "Join some choruses," he said. "Enter the League of Reformed Sluts…"

He was mumbling something else as he left, an old, bent, uncaring man. I covered Peck with a sheet, pulled the drape, and went out into the living room. The drunks were snoring obscenely, filling the air with alcoholic fumes, and I took them both by the heels and dragged them out in the yard, leaving them in the puddle by the fountain.

Dawn was breaking once more and the stars were dimming in the paling sky. I got into the taxi and dialed the old Subway on the console.

It was full of people. It was impossible to get through to the railing, although it seemed to me that only two or three men were filling out the forms, while the rest were just looking, stretching their necks eagerly. Neither the round-headed man nor Eli were to be seen behind the barrier, and no one knew where they could be found. Below, in the cross-passages and tunnels, drunken, shouting, half-crazed men and hysterical women were milling about. There were shots, distant and muffled and some loud and close, the concrete underfoot shook with the detonations, and a mixture of smells – gunpowder, sweat, smoke, gasoline, perfume, and whiskey – floated in the air.

Squealing and arm-waving teenagers surrounded a big fellow who dripped blood and whose pale face shone with a look of triumph. Somewhere wild beasts roared menacingly. In the halls, the audience was going wild in front of huge screens showing somebody blindfolded, firing a spray of bullets from a machine gun held against his belly, and someone else sat up to his chest in some black and heavy liquid, blue from the cold and smoking a crackling cigar, and another one with a tension-twisted face, suspended as though cast in stone in some sort of web of taut cords…

Then I found out where Eli was. I saw round-head by a dirty room full of old sandbags. He stood in the doorway, his face covered with soot, smelling of burnt gunpowder, the pupils of his eyes fully distended. Every few seconds he bent down and brushed his knees, not hearing me at all, so that I had to shake him to make him take notice of me.

"There is no Eli," he barked. "Gone, do you understand? Nothing but smoke – get it? Twenty kilovolts, one hundred amperes, see? He didn't leap far enough!"

He pushed me away vigorously and took off into the dirty room, jumping over the sandbags. Elbowing the curious out of the way, he got to a low metal door.

"Let me through," he howled. "Let me at it once more. God favors a third time!"

The door shut heavily and the mob surged away, stumbling and falling over the bags. I didn't wait for him to come out.

Or not to come out. He was no longer of any use to me. There was only Rimeyer left. There was also Vousi, but I couldn't count on her. So there was really only Rimeyer. I was not going to wake him. I'd wait outside his room.

The sun was already up and the filthied streets were empty.