The Complete Short Stories

‘They won’t,’ Neill said. He stood up, suddenly bored by Morley’s questions. ‘The total tempo of their lives will be lower than ours, these stresses and tensions won’t begin to crystallize. We’ll soon seem like a lot of manic-depressives to them, running round like dervishes half the day, then collapsing into a stupor the other half.’

He moved towards the door and reached out to the light switch. ‘Well, I’ll see you at six o’clock.’

They left the lecture room and started down the corridor together.

‘What are you doing now?’ Morley asked.

Neill laughed. ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘I’m going to get a good night’s sleep.’

A little after midnight Avery and Gorrell were playing table-tennis in the floodlit gymnasium. They were competent players, and passed the ball backwards and forwards with a minimum of effort. Both felt strong and alert; Avery was sweating slightly, but this was due to the arc-lights blazing down from the roof — maintaining, for safety’s sake, an illusion of continuous day — rather than to any excessive exertion of his own. The oldest of the three volunteers, a tall and somewhat detached figure, with a lean, closed face, he made no attempt to talk to Gorrell and concentrated on adjusting himself to the period ahead. He knew he would find no trace of fatigue, but as he played he carefully checked his respiratory rhythms and muscle tonus, and kept one eye on the clock.

Gorrell, a jaunty, self-composed man, was also subdued. Between strokes he glanced cautiously round the gymnasium, noting the hangarlike walls, the broad, polished floor, the shuttered skylights in the roof. Now and then, without realizing it, he fingered the circular trepan scar at the back of his head.

Out in the centre of the gymnasium a couple of armchairs and a sofa had been drawn up round a gramophone, and here Lang was playing chess with Morley, doing his section of night duty. Lang hunched forward over the chessboard. Wiry-haired and aggressive, with a sharp nose and mouth, he watched the pieces closely. He had played regularly against Morley since he arrived at the Clinic four months earlier, and the two were almost equally matched, with perhaps a slight edge to Morley. But tonight Lang had opened with a new attack and after ten moves had completed his development and begun to split Morley’s defence. His mind felt clear and precise, focused sharply on the game in front of him, though only that morning had he finally left the cloudy limbo of post-hypnosis through which he and the two others had drifted for three weeks like lobotomized phantoms.

Behind him, along one wall of the gymnasium, were the offices housing the control unit. Over his shoulder he saw a face peering at him through the circular observation window in one of the doors. Here, at constant alert, a group of orderlies and interns sat around waiting by their emergency trollies. (The end door, into a small ward containing three cots, was kept carefully locked.) After a few moments the face withdrew. Lang smiled at the elaborate machinery watching over him. His transference on to Neill had been positive and he had absolute faith in the success of the experiment. Neill had assured him that, at worst, the sudden accumulation of metabolites in his bloodstream might induce a mild torpor, but his brain would be unimpaired.

‘Nerve fibre, Robert,’ Neill had told him time and again, ‘never fatigues. The brain cannot tire.’

While he waited for Morley to move he checked the time from the clock mounted against the wall. Twelve twenty. Morley yawned, his face drawn under the grey skin. He looked tired and drab. He slumped down into the armchair, face in one hand. Lang reflected how frail and primitive those who slept would soon seem, their minds sinking off each evening under the load of accumulating toxins, the edge of their awareness worn and frayed. Suddenly he realized that at that very moment Neill himself was asleep. A curiously disconcerting vision of Neill, huddled in a rumpled bed two floors above, his blood-sugar low, and his mind drifting, rose before him.

Lang laughed at his own conceit, and Morley retrieved the rook he had just moved.

‘I must be going blind. What am I doing?’

‘No,’ Lang said. He started to laugh again. ‘I’ve just discovered I’m awake.’

Morley smiled. ‘We’ll have to put that down as one of the sayings of the week.’ He replaced the rook, sat up and looked across at the table-tennis pair. Gorrell had hit a fast backhand low over the net and Avery was running after the ball.

‘They seem to be okay. How about you?’

‘Right on top of myself,’ Lang said. His eyes flicked up and down the board and he moved before Morley caught his breath back.

Usually they went right through into the end-game, but tonight Morley had to concede on the twentieth move.

‘Good,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You’ll be able to take on Neil! soon. Like another?’

‘No. Actually the game bores me. I can see that’s going to be a problem.’

‘You’ll face it. Give yourself time to find your legs.’