The Reign of Brainwash: Dystopia Box Set. Эдгар Аллан По

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      The words 'Throw it all away' pierced through the enfolding layers of incomprehension to the quick of the Deltas' consciousness. An angry murmur went up from the crowd.

      'I come to bring you freedom,' said the Savage, turning back towards the twins. 'I come...'

      The Deputy Sub-Bursar heard no more; he had slipped out of the vestibule and was looking up a number in the telephone book.

      ****

      'Not in his own rooms,' Bernard summed up. 'Not in mine, not in yours. Not at the Aphroditæum; not at the Centre or the College. Where can he have got to?'

      Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. They had come back from their work expecting to find the Savage waiting for them at one or other of their usual meeting-places, and there was no sign of the fellow. Which was annoying, as they had meant to nip across to Biarritz in Helmholtz's four-seater sporticopter. They'd be late for dinner if he didn't come soon.

      'We'll give him five more minutes,' said Helmholtz. 'If he doesn't turn up by then, we'll...'

      The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted him. He picked up the receiver. 'Hullo. Speaking.' Then, after a long interval of listening, 'Ford in Flivver!' he swore. 'I'll come at once.'

      'What is it?' Bernard asked.

      'A fellow I know at the Park Lane Hospital,' said Helmholtz. 'The Savage is there. Seems to have gone mad. Anyhow, it's urgent. Will you come with me?'

      Together they hurried along the corridor to the lifts.

      ****

      'But do you like being slaves?' the Savage was saying as they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. 'Do you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking,' he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. 'Yes, puking!' he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty--all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. 'Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?' Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. 'Don't you?' he repeated, but got no answer to his question. 'Very well, then,' he went on grimly. 'I'll teach you; I'll make you be free whether you want to or not.' And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area.

      For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror.

      'He's mad,' whispered Bernard, staring with wide open eyes. 'They'll kill him. They'll...' A great shout suddenly went up from the mob; a wave of movement drove it menacingly towards the Savage. 'Ford help him!' said Bernard, and averted his eyes.

      'Ford helps those who help themselves.' And with a laugh, actually a laugh of exultation, Helmholtz Watson pushed his way through the crowd.

      'Free, free!' the Savage shouted, and with one hand continued to throw the soma into the area while, with the other, he punched the indistinguishable faces of his assailants. 'Free!' And suddenly there was Helmholtz at his side--'Good old Helmholtz!'--also punching--'Men at last!'--and in the interval also throwing the poison out by handfuls through the open window. 'Yes, men! men!' and there was no more poison left. He picked up the cash-box and showed them its black emptiness. 'You're free!'

      Howling, the Deltas charged with a redoubled fury.

      Hesitant on the fringes of the battle, 'They're done for,' said Bernard and, urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward to help them; then thought better of it and halted; then, ashamed, stepped forward again; then again thought better of it, and was standing in an agony of humiliated indecision--thinking that they might be killed if he didn't help them, and that he might be killed if he did--when (Ford be praised!), goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in their gas-masks, in ran the police.

      Bernard dashed to meet them. He waved his arms; and it was action, he was doing something. He shouted 'Help!' several times, more and more loudly so as to give himself the illusion of helping. 'Help! Help! HELP!'

      The policemen pushed him out of the way and got on with their work. Three men with spraying machines buckled to their shoulders pumped thick clouds of soma vapour into the air. Two more were busy round the portable Synthetic Music Box. Carrying water pistols charged with a powerful anæsthetic, four others had pushed their way into the crowd and were methodically laying out, squirt by squirt, the more ferocious of the fighters.

      'Quick, quick!' yelled Bernard. 'They'll be killed if you don't hurry. They'll... Oh!' Annoyed by his chatter, one of the policemen had given him a shot from his water pistol. Bernard stood for a second or two wambling unsteadily on legs that seemed to have lost their bones, their tendons, their muscles, to have become mere sticks of jelly, and at last not even jelly--water: he tumbled in a heap on the floor.

      Suddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began to speak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength). Straight from the depths of a non-existent heart, 'My friends, my friends!' said the Voice so pathetically, with a note of such infinitely tender reproach that, behind their gas-masks, even the policemen's eyes were momentarily dimmed with tears, 'what is the meaning of this? Why aren't you all being happy and good together. Happy and good,' the Voice repeated. 'At peace, at peace.' It trembled, sank into a whisper and momentarily expired. 'Oh, I do want you to be happy,' it began, with a yearning earnestness. 'I do so want you to be good! Please, please be good and...'

      Two minutes later the Voice and the soma vapour had produced their effect. In tears, the Deltas were kissing and hugging one another--half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensive embrace. Even Helmholtz and the Savage were almost crying. A fresh supply of pill-boxes was brought in from the Bursary; a new distribution was hastily made and, to the sound of the Voice's richly affectionate, baritone valedictions, the twins dispersed, blubbering as though their hearts would break. 'Good-bye, my dearest, dearest friends, Ford keep you! Good-bye, my dearest, dearest friends. Ford keep you. Good-bye, my dearest, dearest...'

      When the last of the Deltas had gone the policeman switched off the current. The angelic Voice fell silent.

      'Will you come quietly?' asked the Sergeant, 'or must we anæsthetize?' He pointed his water pistol menacingly.

      'Oh, we'll come quietly,' the Savage answered, dabbing alternately a cut lip, a scratched neck, and a bitten left hand.

      Still keeping his handkerchief to his bleeding nose, Helmholtz nodded in confirmation.

      Awake and having recovered the use of his legs, Bernard had chosen this moment to move as inconspicuously as he could towards the door.

      'Hi, you there,' called the Sergeant, and a swine-masked policeman hurried across the room and laid a hand on the young man's shoulder.

      Bernard turned with an expression of indignant innocence. Escaping? He hadn't dreamed of such a thing. 'Though what on earth you want me for,' he said to the Sergeant, 'I really can't imagine.'

      'You're a friend of the prisoners, aren't you?'

      'Well...' said Bernard, and hesitated. No, he really couldn't СКАЧАТЬ