CHAPTER 16

Adelle was trying to remember something she had read years before. She asked Mondor, “If one eats little or nothing, isn’t the stomach supposed to shrink?”

“So they say.”

“And then it’ll take less food to make one feel full?”

Mondor shrugged. “I suppose.”

“It isn’t true,” Adelle said bitterly.

Their most recent meal had consisted of a small banana and a half pint carton of chocolate milk apiece. Adelle felt as starved afterward as she had before. The chocolate milk furnished the one bright note. When they finished, Dolan gleefully took charge of the three small milk cartons, rinsed them, and filled them with water. The extra supply would be invaluable. Adelle’s quart carton was showing alarming signs of wear.

Gas routed them from a sleep that seemed to have lasted only a few minutes. Again Adelle stumbled into the alley carrying her shoes and the quart carton of water. Mondor and Dolan carried shoes and the three small cartons. Once safely around a corner, they paused to put their shoes on.

Adelle rubbed her eyes and said sleepily to Mondor, “A day or two ago, or maybe it was a week ago—have we been down here a week?”

“It certainly seems that long,” Mondor answered gravely.

“You were saying something about the psychological effects of going without sleep.”

“Was I?”

“Yes. I remember it as well as I’m able to remember anything. Dimly. What were they?”

Mondor reflected. “I don’t remember. I wish you two would stop trying to make a psychologist out of me. I didn’t even like the subject.”

“What’s the good of a college education if you can’t remember any of it?” Dolan demanded peevishly.

“What was the question?” Mondor asked.

“What happens to you when you go forever without sleep?”

“It has serious psychological effects.”

“So does death,” Dolan said. “What kind of an answer is that?”

The gas was drifting out to them from the Rest Center or perhaps from another outlet nearby. As they hurried away, Adelle prodded Mondor again. “If the lack of sleep has serious effects, we ought to know what they are so we’ll know what to expect.”

“It’s been used for torture,” Mondor said. “The Fascists and Communists used it to extract phony confessions. It can lead to hallucinations and even insanity. It can cause physical disorders.” He shrugged. “I don’t remember. If all the garbage they’re throwing at us really is some kind of scientific test, they ought to have a way to measure the results. Or think they have. Then they can write papers about what the difference would have been if we’d had five minutes sleep instead of ninety seconds or eaten two bananas instead of one.”

“They’re insane,” Adelle said.

“Of course. If one sleepless person has a better memory for numbers than another, he’ll remember them better no matter how many bananas the other person eats.”

“I haven’t experienced any hallucinations,” Adelle said.

“How do you know?” Mondor asked. “They’d probably seem real.”

“The gas I smell seems very real,” Dolan said. “I think they want us to move faster.”

During the next air raid, they began to smell the dead. The sickening, sweetish odor of bodies long buried in the rubble of smashed buildings permeated the alley. And the planes roared overhead, more bombs smashed down and rocked the cement floor they lay on, and bullets ricocheted, while acrid fumes and blinding smoke from nearby explosions seared their throats and made them cough convulsively.

Adelle glanced sideways at Mondor. His beard had completely darkened his face. She wondered how long it would take him to achieve an impressive thatch like Dolan’s. She had never before viewed male hirsuteness as a subject for research or even speculation. She giggled, which made both men look at her reprovingly. They expected her to keep her attention on the air raid.

The sound of the planes faded; bombs and bullets ceased. The fumes, the smoke, the stench of the dead lingered. Adelle pushed herself to her feet. “If you two don’t mind, the smell here—”

“Madam has a perverted taste in perfume,” Dolan announced. “Madam is a pervert.”

“They’ve tested our sight and hearing,” Mondor said. “Smell had to be next. I wonder how they’ll manage taste and touch.”

They resumed their formation and shuffled on, feeling their way with cautious feet before they took each step. In the next alley they stopped to rest, and all three of them fell asleep at once. The alley was already thick with gas when they awoke. They fled to its far end, turned, and sat down again to wait for the gas to catch up with them.

“How are you on religion?” Dolan asked Adelle suddenly.

“I’m in favor of it.”

“Blanket endorsement?”

She wanted desperately to sleep, and it took her a moment to focus her thoughts. “Depends on how you’re defining ‘religion’. Too many people confuse it with theology.”

“I see. Religion, yes. Theology, no.”

“Something like that. Why? Do you have an urge to be converted?”

“I was wondering how a deeply religious person would react to this. The fickle finger of the Almighty and that sort of thing. I suspect Job sat amidst his calamities feeling about God very much the way I do about Madam, but he had a good press agent. Is it possible to praise the wisdom of a Supreme Being from a cloud of tear gas? Mondor? Mondor!”

Mondor started and opened his eyes with a scowl. The hair that tumbled down over his glasses looked longer, now, and the glasses were filthy, but he no longer seemed to care whether his bleary vision saw anything or not.

“What?” he asked irritably.

“Is religion a factor in psychological tests?”

“Not in mine.”

“Obviously. Is it in anyone’s?”

“Might be. Might sustain a person in adversity. Or so I’ve heard.”

“My guardian was Roman Catholic,” Adelle said. “He wisely didn’t try to convert me, but he took me to Mass. He thought if he exposed me to the truth, it would take. Like being inoculated by passing through a sick room.”

Dolan chuckled.

“It left me with an impression of Catholicism I never really understood until I saw a photo of a piece of statuary that had been salvaged from an ancient Roman shipwreck. It was green and corroded and covered with barnacles and a mess of ucky junk. After it was cleaned up, it was a beautiful statue.”

“That’s Catholicism?” Dolan asked doubtfully.

Adelle nodded. “It’s overlaid with the clutter and untruths of centuries and all the corrosion of theology, but if someone would clean it up, underneath it’s pure gold. Probably something similar could be said of all religions.”

Dolan heaved a sigh. “Religion, yes. Theology, no. When your guardian was shanghaiing you to Mass, did you perchance hear anything about a patron saint of psychologists we could ask to intervene for us?”

“I don’t remember any.”

“Pity. Looks as if we’ll have to undergo this ordeal without the sustaining force of religion. I smell gas.”

Adelle stumbled after him, thinking about her guardian. He had been a remarkably good man, a devoutly religious man. He tried to teach her to pray. “Ask, and it shall be given you.” This always seemed faintly disreputable to Adelle—like begging for handouts on a street corner. Too many people were asking God for things they should have been able to do without or acquire on their own initiative.

In a totally helpless situation such as theirs, what should they pray for? That Madam and her goons be touched by grace? That would take a considerable miracle. Only a saint should have the right to make a request like that, she thought. She knew she fell far short of sainthood, and she had two additional handicaps in the form of Dolan and Mondor. Anyway, divine intervention seemed far too remote to be effectual with their problem. What they urgently needed was human intervention—someone to break in and stop what was being done to them.

In the end, that was what she prayed for—for human intervention. She even remembered to add special prayers for Dolan and Mondor.

In the next alley, the lights went out again and they encountered a garbage dump. As they cautiously made their way through the darkness, foul odors closed in and overwhelmed them. Adelle had the sensation of wallowing up to her knees in rotting debris. They dared not hurry, but they couldn’t hold their breaths indefinitely. The stench became so overpowering it was difficult to breathe. Finally they found their way into another alley and fresher air, and they halted, panting.

“How the devil do they do that?” Dolan demanded. “They must have some way to pipe in odors just as they pipe in sound effects and gas. Let’s move a bit further from it before we try to rest.”

They shuffled along in darkness until Dolan announced, “Opening on the right.” They pivoted and started off along the intersecting alley. They heard the swish of the partition rising behind them. The lights came on, and with them came the thunderous hiss of an enormous volume of gas escaping. At the same time, halfway down the alley, a partition began to rise from the floor.

“They’re cutting us off!” Dolan shouted. “Let’s go!”

He raced forward. Adelle, her body wracked with weariness, could manage nothing more than a stumbling lope that mocked any semblance of running. She muttered to herself, “I can’t. I can’t.”

Dolan reached the rising partition first, leaped, hauled himself up. Seated on the slowly rising structure, he reached down an arm for Adelle to grab. She thrust the milk carton into her purse, clutched Dolan’s hand, and was jerked upward. As he helped her over, Mondor’s jump barely enabled him to grip the top of the wall. Struggling and kicking, he pulled himself up. The three of them hung by their arms from the other side and then dropped to the floor. The jolt of the landing staggered Adelle, and she fell heavily. Her feet had been dangling five or six feet above the floor when she finally let go.

“Now wasn’t that tricky,” Dolan said scornfully.

“The floor is wet,” Mondor announced.

“So’s my shirt,” Dolan said. “I smashed my two milk cartons.”

“You weren’t carrying this much water,” Adelle said. She was sitting in it. She got to her feet and anxiously checked her own carton. For a moment the three of them stared perplexedly. Then she became aware of the sound of running water, and at the same instant Dolan shouted, “Run!”

Far ahead of them, at the end of a long alley, water was gushing from several openings. Just beyond, another partition was rising from the floor.

Again Adelle tried to run. She could not. She called on all of her reserves of strength, but she could only stagger forward with water sloshing about her ankles. Dolan took her arm and tried to hurry her. Mondor was having his own problems. They were belaboring exhausted bodies, and the bodies did not respond.

Ahead of them, the wall rose slowly. It was waist high; then it was head high.

And the water had reached their knees.

Dolan left them and dashed, splashing, to the wall. Already he had to jump to grab the top. He pulled himself up and turned. Adelle stumbled up to the wall and stood there, panting. Dolan’s slowly rising hands beckoned to her. She gazed up at him helplessly. He shouted something, and she stirred herself, made a feeble leap, and brushed his hand with her fingertips. Again she tried and missed. Mondor had leaped unsuccessfully for the top of the wall and lost his balance. He fell backward into the water. Adelle jumped again, and Dolan, hanging lower, caught her and pulled her up.

He left her unceremoniously draped over the rising wall and turned to help Mondor. “Get out of the way!” he shouted.

She slid over the wall, hung by her hands, and dropped, landing with a shock that wracked her body and sent her staggering backward. She sat down heavily, and for a moment she could do nothing more than dazedly contemplate her soaked clothing. When she looked up, Dolan and Mondor seemed about to be squeezed against the ceiling. She forced herself to scramble out of the way as both of them slipped over the top, made the long drop to the floor, and went sprawling.

They lay where they fell, and Adelle, seated nearby with her back against the wall, could neither move nor speak. The only sound was their heavy breathing.

Finally Mondor raised a hand and felt his wet shirt. “Smashed my carton,” he muttered.

Dolan said nothing. Adelle shifted her position and slumped sideways to cushion her head on her arm. Something was missing. She tried to focus her thoughts. Something—she looked doubtfully at her hands. She had been carrying something for days, and now she didn’t have it.

The carton of water. Her carton. The quart carton.

She remembered jamming it into her purse, but it was gone. She wanted to tell Dolan how ironic it was. She’d lost the water in the water. “See?” she wanted to say. “Ironic.”

She had to sleep. The terrifying, exhausting escapes, the hopelessness of their plight, seemed no concern of hers. All she wanted was sleep—without gas, for once; without air raid sounds; without stenches—but sleep would not come, though she felt increasingly drowsy. When finally she realized something was wrong, she was too groggy to move. She tried to cry out, to sound a warning, but she could only lie there and experience the horrible sensation of dropping knowingly into unconsciousness.

She emerged slowly like a swimmer frantically struggling up from the depths. She first became aware of the lower part of her body, which felt damp. Without moving her head, she stared uncomprehendingly at the glowing ceiling and then at the drab gray walls. She had scaled a rising partition—no, two of them—with agonizing effort and with Dolan pulling her up. She had splashed through water to reach the second one. That was why she was wet.

It took intense, painful concentration to push herself into a sitting position. She clasped both hands to her throbbing forehead before she looked about her.

She was alone.

She sat staring at the short, bleak stretch of alley and its single opening, unable to comprehend what had happened. The men were gone. Had they recovered first and left without her? She doubted it. Madam’s goons must have moved them—or her—while all of them were unconscious.

She flexed her legs and looked about her. The floor was wet under her soaked clothing, which gave her something else to be perplexed about. The men’s clothing should have left similar puddles, but there were none.

She called out, “Where are you two?”

There was no answer. She called again. Then she slumped forward, hands pressed to her throbbing head, and tried to think.

She was alone. The men were gone. They wouldn’t have walked off without her. Therefore they had been moved. Or she had been moved. Madam and her goons had deliberately rendered all three of them unconscious in order to separate them.

Should she try to find the men? Should she try to make her way back to the kitchen and water and beds and maybe food? Should she try to beat the odds and escape?

“If I start walking,” she told herself, “I’ll go where they want me to go and nowhere else. They’ll open and close alleys and chase me with gas and lead me into traps and make me climb walls. So why should I go anywhere?”

She leaned back against the wall and dozed off almost at once. Gas awakened her—minutes later, she thought. The smashed watch that she now carried in her purse with other useless paraphernalia posed a perpetual question mark. She got to her feet and stumbled through the opening into the next alley. One of her legs was numb from lying on the hard floor, and her brief nap had left her feeling more exhausted than before.

The opening closed behind her. She took a few more steps and was about to seat herself when a voice froze her in a half crouch.

“Adelle! Adelle! Where has that bitch gone to?”

It was Dolan.

“Probably walked off and left us. Let her go. She’ll fall into something and break her neck.” That was Mondor.

“Look. We were doing fine as a team. We should try to find her.”

Adelle called out, “Craig! Kevin!”

“Maybe she’s too far away to hear us,” Mondor said.

“You pound on that wall, and I’ll pound on this one.”

A robust thumping followed. When it stopped, Adelle called again, “Kevin! Craig!”

There was no response. She didn’t hear the voices again. Or the thumping. Had it been a recording? Or had she imagined it? Mondor had said hallucinations would seem real.

“It must have been a recording,” she muttered. “Otherwise, they’d have heard me. Or would they? I should have pounded back at them.”

Then she saw them standing at the end of the alley. She waved and hurried toward them. Long before she reached them, they vanished, and a solitary figure, a strange, depraved-looking female, came trotting unsteadily toward her.

She was flabbergasted. Someone else in the maze? She halted. The figure halted. She started toward it, and again the figure advanced.

Finally she recognized herself: slovenly-looking, wet, tousle-haired, face smudged and taut with exhaustion—she was stumbling frantically to a rendezvous with a mirror. She stood looking at herself for a long time. She wanted to sit down, to think this thing out, to sleep.

The hiss of gas set her in motion again, and she lurched through an opening on her right. She could no longer run. Her fastest pace seemed to be a faltering stumble. She was sleep-walking her way along the alley, fleeing from the gas, but floundering more and more slowly.

“Adelle!” Dolan’s voice called. “Where the hell is she?”

Adelle slumped against a wall and pounded on it feebly. “Craig! Kevin!” Again she told herself unconvincingly that it was a recording.

She stumbled on and found a test room confronting her. She would have fled from it as from a torture chamber, but she heard the hiss of gas behind her. The room might offer a brief respite, or it might offer doom. The numbers had become so long, and the multiple keyboard problem solving so complex, that it took an intense, cooperative effort from all three of them to gain a frantically fumbling solution.

Resignedly she entered, the door swished shut, and she leaned against the wall and waited for the flashing numerals. Respite, or doom?

Then she heard a gurgle. Water was gushing into the room.

She hadn’t tried a test alone since that first day when she hadn’t known she was being tested. Now she was much too exhausted to concentrate. With the hopelessness of total despair she watched the flashing numerals. Four, seven, nine, three, eight, two, six, zero…the board went dark. She stared in astonishment. That was all. Four, seven, nine, three, eight, two, six, zero. She had expected an interminable series that would instantly condemn her to failure. Four, seven, nine, three, eight, two, six, zero. It was simple. With water sloshing about her ankles, she went confidently to the response panels.

She tried center, left, right; center, right, left; right, center left; left, center, right. She tried the whole series on one panel after another, and then she divided the numerals. Nothing happened except that water continued to gush into the room. It had passed her knees and was half way to her hips. Four, seven, nine, three, eight, two, six, zero—had she messed it up? She was frightfully tired. If she had been a devout person, would the force of religion be sustaining her? She envisioned God wearing four, seven, nine, three, eight, two, six, zero like a convict’s number. What hadn’t she tried? Right, center—no, right, left, center? The water was rising faster and had passed her waist. Left, right, center—what else was there? She had to think, and there was no time for it. Four, seven nine, three, eight, two, six, zero—she must have got it wrong. God was wearing a forged number.

There were no other sequences, and the water was at her shoulders. Soon she would have to swim. Four, seven, nine, three, eight, two, six, zero?

She tried a twist that they hadn’t experienced yet: Right panel, each numeral twice; central panel, each numeral twice; left panel, each numeral twice. The water had reached her throat. Should she try the same thing in other sequences? There wasn’t time.

The water was at her chin. Soon it would pass the response boards. Would it short circuit something? She was tempted, so awfully tempted, to lean back and let it support her body. It would be restful. Perhaps she could even sleep that way.

She forced herself to concentrate. Four, seven, nine, three, eight, two, six, zero. God spelled backward read—suddenly alert, she began to press buttons on the central panel, desperately trying to reverse four, seven, nine, three, eight, two six, zero. Zero, six, two, eight—she faltered, she could not think—three, nine—she faltered again—seven, four.

Then she leaned back and closed her eyes, resting, floating. She no longer felt despair. She felt wonderful. There was no sound, but from somewhere below her she could feel the vibration of water still gushing in. Now, perhaps, she could sleep. This was a far better death than one from gun shots, or explosives, or being crushed at the bottom of a pit.

Her feet sank slowly, and she thrust her hands down to give herself buoyancy. She felt fully relaxed for the first time in days. She may have dozed off. When she snapped back to consciousness, she found that her feet had sunk again and were touching the floor. She thrust her hands down—her hands touched the floor. She opened her eyes.

Now she could hear the gurgle of water draining out far more swiftly than it had poured in. She sat on the floor as the last of it vanished into slots around the base of the walls. A door swished open. She would have liked to remain there in the cool, dim light. Sopping wet as she was, she could have lain on the cement floor and slept; but she knew that gas, or heat, or something worse would quickly drive her out.

She dragged her dripping figure from the test room and slumped to the floor. For a time she rested against a wall, face buried in her arms, her soaked clothing making a large puddle around her. Finally she sniffed gas, and she resignedly started off, dripping a trail of water.

As she approached the alley’s end, the lights went off. She felt her way forward cautiously, found an opening, and turned into it. Immediately she wished she hadn’t. Something was wrong with the floor underfoot. It felt different. It sounded different. She would have turned back, but the opening behind her was already blocked. She stood motionless in the darkness, uncertain, reluctant to move but too exhausted to be frightened.

Then the lights came on. She remained where she was, staring.

Her world had been turned on its side. She stood on one of the gray metal walls. One her left was the unpainted cement floor; a dozen feet away, on the right, were the luminous ceiling panels. Just above her head was the opposite wall. She closed her eyes, opened them again.

“Kevin said it would seem real,” she told herself. “It seems real.”

She stomped a foot, spattering the wall-turned-floor with water. She got back a metallic thump. She took a few tentative steps. “Either they turned the basement on its side, which seems unlikely, or gravity has flipped its lid, which seems even less likely,” she mused.

She moved forward unsteadily, leaving a wavering trail of water on the misplaced wall. She had no choice. No other route was open to her, and she didn’t want another serving of tear gas while she had this to figure out. As she walked, the sections of wall sagged under her weight. “Hey, goons!” she called. “The hallucination is a hoax. If you walk on a wall and it sags, that means it’s the floor!” She giggled with pleasure at her ability to reason when she was too tired to think.

Twice she came to an uncertain halt, too exhausted either to continue or to sit down and rest. The hiss of gas forced her to move again, and somehow she managed to push herself to the end of the alley. When she reached it, she stood looking down into the next one.

Looking down into it. The opening was in the wall, as it should have been, but the wall was the floor, and therefore the next alley, which ran parallel to the one she was in, also had walls that were floor and ceiling and a floor and ceiling that were walls.

She rubbed her forehead fretfully. It was only a drop of six feet or so, but that would place her in a sub-sub-basement, and eventually she would have to haul herself back to the level she was on now. She doubted that she could do it. She sat on the edge of the opening and dangled her feet into it, resting and trying to think. She felt overwhelmed by loneliness, by the necessity to face dangers and make decisions by herself. Until that moment, she hadn’t fully realized how much she had depended on the men.

She numbly tried to think, but no thoughts came. Finally she heard the ominous hiss of gas nearby. Resignedly she gripped the edge of the opening and swung down.

This time the alley was a long one. She was moving so slowly along the sagging wall sections that it seemed to take an eternity to reach the end. Long before she did so, the lights went out. She crept forward cautiously, fearing that this wall-turned-floor would have an opening she could fall through, but she arrived at the end of the alley without finding any.

An opening in the opposite wall would mean she had to pull herself up, and she already knew she couldn’t do that. She absolutely could not do that. She backed up slowly, feeling the sections of metal above her head, but she found no opening.

Then she tried the fake cement floor that formed one of the walls, and she found an opening immediately. Heart pounding with relief, moving with infinite caution, she slipped through.

For a moment she thought things had returned to normal. The walls of this alley were the proper distance apart and made of metal—they gave off the usual metallic thump—but the floor seemed strange to her. As she knelt to examine it, the lights came on.

They came on below her. She was walking on the ceiling.

She stared down at the glowing panels for a moment, and then, in a corner of one of them, she stomped her heel. Drops of water from her sopping pant leg sprayed the plastic. Otherwise, nothing happened.

“So it’s not the same stuff as the ceiling panels,” she mused. “They were thin plastic, and they raised up when Craig pushed on them. They couldn’t possibly hold my weight.” She called out, “Another phony hallucination, goons!”

The absurdness of it roused her momentarily and fostered another illusion, one of an unsuspected reserve of energy. Nonchalantly she strolled the length of the alley, snickering over the silly contrivance someone had invested a fortune in for no better reason than to study her reactions. She wondered if she could get the creator of this stupid experiment fired by doing all the wrong things.

Again the lights went out. She found an opening and stepped through it, and the wall closed after her. When the lights came on, her world had returned to normal. She thumped on both walls and stomped on the genuine cement floor before she was convinced. She was still alone, but at least she was seeing things right side up.

Her recently-discovered reserve of energy vanished with the other illusions, leaving her as exhausted and depressed as before, and her solitude had begun to frighten her. She knew there would be obstacles she couldn’t get through or over by herself. She moved ahead cautiously, testing each segment of the floor before she entrusted her weight to it.

So groggy had she become that the distant mutter of airplanes had swollen to a roar before she grasped what was happening. She threw herself down as bombs began to explode about her. She hugged the cement floor restfully, ignoring the bullets that whined and ricocheted and the stifling reek of the unburied dead. Perhaps she even dozed off between explosions. It felt reassuring to have things back to normal.