Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #2. Edgar Pangborn
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folks in the yard. There’d been no colored folks here. There’d been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum’s hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. “Mistah, you breakin’ regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!”
*
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
“You theah! Stop!”
“Call the sheriff! He’s headin’ foah Piney Woods!”
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man’s mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he’d seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
*
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen’s uniforms. “You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You’ll have to come with us.”
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. “Rode her hard,” he said, and he sounded real worried. “Shouldn’t have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now....”
The officer holding Harry’s arm said, “Pete.”
The officer examining Plum said, “It won’t make any difference in a while.”
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
“Take the horse back to his farm,” the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. “He sure must like horses,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Am I going to jail?”
“No.”
“Where then?”
“The doctor’s place.”
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan’s farm. Except he’d never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn’t like any house he’d ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn’t see or hear people.
He did hear something; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
*
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. “Where’s Petey?” he asked.
“Pete’s all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr’s farm.”
The old man sighed. “I didn’t know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn’t predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence.”
“No violence, Dad.”
“Fine, Stan.” He looked at Harry. “I’m going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It’ll settle your nerves and make everything....”
“What happened to Davie?” Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. “Just step this way, Mr. Burr.”
He didn’t resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
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