“Yes,” he said, halting in his speech as if he were out of breath, “Yes-of course-I’ll come.”
They led him out. The passages were already still and the sound of talk and laughter from the public rooms on the ground floor had ceased. He stumbled, and they linked arms with him. The journey seemed long: passage after passage, passages he had never seen before, doors to unlock, and then into a place where all the lights were on, and there were strange smells. Then Filostrato spoke through a speaking-tube and a door was opened to them.
Mark found himself in a surgical-looking room with glaring lights, and sinks, and bottles, and glittering instruments. A young man whom he hardly knew, dressed in a white coat, received them.
“Strip to your underclothes,” said Filostrato. While Mark was obeying he noticed that the opposite wall of the room was covered with dials. Numbers of flexible tubes came out of the floor and went into the wall just beneath the dials. The staring dial faces and the bunches of tubes beneath them, which seemed to be faintly pulsating, gave one the impression of looking at some creature with many eyes and many tentacles. The young man kept his eyes fixed on the vibrating needles of the dials. When the three newcomers had removed their outer clothes, they washed their hands and faces, and after that Filostrato plucked white clothes for them out of a glass container with a pair of forceps. When they had put these on he gave them also gloves and masks such as surgeons wear. There followed a moment’s silence while Filostrato studied the dials. “Yes, yes,” he said. “A little more air. Not much: point nought three. Turn on the chamber air . . . slowly . . . to Full. Now the lights. Now air in the lock. A little less of the solution. And now” (here he turned to Straik and Studdock) “are you ready to go in?”
He led them to a door in the same wall as the dials.
Nine
I
“It was the worst dream I’ve had yet,” said Jane next morning. She was seated in the Blue Room with the Director and Grace Ironwood.
“Yes,” said the Director. “Yours is perhaps the hardest post: until the real struggle begins.”
“I dreamed I was in a dark room,” said Jane, “with queer smells in it and a sort of low humming noise. Then the light came on-but not very much light, and for a long time I didn’t realise what I was looking at. And when I made it out . . . I should have waked up if I hadn’t made a great effort not to. I thought I saw a face floating just in front of me. A face, not a head, if you understand what I mean. That is, there was a beard and nose and eyes-at least, you couldn’t see the eyes because it had coloured glasses on, but there didn’t seem to be anything above the eyes. Not at first. But as I got used to the light, I got a horrible shock. I thought the face was a mask tied on to a kind of balloon thing. But it wasn’t, exactly. Perhaps it looked a bit like a man wearing a sort of turban . . . I’m telling this dreadfully badly. What it really was, was a head (the rest of a head) which had had the top part of the skull taken off and then . . . then . . . as if something inside had boiled over. A great big mass which bulged out from inside what was left of the skull. Wrapped in some kind of composition stuff, but very thin stuff. You could see it twitch. Even in my fright I remember thinking, ‘Oh, kill it, kill it. Put it out of its pain. But only for a second, because I thought the thing was dead, really. It was green looking and the mouth was wide open and quite dry-. You realise I was a long time, looking at it, before anything else happened. And soon I saw that it wasn’t exactly floating. It was fixed up on some kind of bracket, or shelf, or pedestal-I don’t know quite what, and there were things hanging from it. From the neck, I mean. Yes, it had a neck and a sort of collar thing round it, but nothing below the collar: no shoulders or body. Only these hanging things. In the dream I thought it was some kind of new man that had only head and entrails: I thought all those tubes were its insides. But presently-I don’t quite know how, I saw that they were artificial. Little rubber tubes and bulbs and little metal things too. I couldn’t understand them. All the tubes went into the wall. Then at last something happened.”
“You’re all right, Jane, are you? “said Miss Ironwood.
“Oh yes,” said Jane, “as far as that goes. Only one somehow doesn’t want to tell it. Well, quite suddenly, like when an engine is started, there came a puff of air out of its mouth, with a hard dry rasping sound. And then there came another, and it settled down into a sort of rhythm-huff, huff, huff-like an imitation of breathing. Then came a most horrible thing: the mouth began to dribble. I know it sounds silly but in a way I felt sorry for it, because it had no hands and couldn’t wipe its mouth. It seems a small thing compared with all the rest but that is how I felt. Then it began working its mouth about and even licking its lips. It was like someone getting a machine into working order. To see it doing that just as if it was alive, and at the same time dribbling over the beard which was all stiff and dead looking . . . Then three people came into the room, all dressed up in white, with masks on, walking as carefully as cats on the top of a wall. One was a great fat man, and another was lanky and boney. The third . . .’ here Jane paused involuntarily. “The third . . . I think it was Mark . . . I mean my husband.” .
“You are uncertain? “said the Director.
“No,” said Jane. “It was Mark. I knew his walk. And I knew the shoes he was wearing. And his voice. It was Mark.”
“I am sorry,” said the Director.
“And then,” said Jane, “all three of them came round and stood in front of the Head. They bowed to it. You couldn’t tell if it was looking at them because of its dark glasses. It kept on with that rhythmical huffing noise. Then it spoke.”
“In English? “said Grace Ironwood.
“No, in French.”
“What did it say?”
“Well, my French wasn’t quite good enough to follow it. It spoke in a queer way. In starts-like a man who’s out of breath. With no proper expression. And of course it couldn’t turn itself this way or that, the way a-a real person-does.”
“Did you understand any of what was said?”
“Not very much. The fat man seemed to be introducing Mark to it. It said something to him. Then Mark tried to answer. I could follow him all right, his French isn’t much better than mine.”
“What did he say?”
“He said something about ‘doing it in a few days if it was possible.’”
“Was that all? “
“Very nearly. You see Mark couldn’t stand it. I knew he wouldn’t be able to: I remember, idiotically, in the dream, I wanted to tell him. I saw he was going to fall. I think I tried to shout out to the other two, ‘He’s going to fall . . . ’ But, of course, I couldn’t. He was sick too. Then they got him out of the room.”
All three were silent for a few seconds.
“Was that all? “said Miss Ironwood.
“Yes,” said Jane. “That’s all I remember. I think I woke up then.”
’The Director took a deep breath. “Well!” he said, glancing at Miss Ironwood, “it becomes plainer and plainer. We must hold a council at once. Is everyone here?”
“No. Dr. Dimble has had to go into Edgestow, into College, to take pupils. He won’t be back till evening.”
“Then we must hold the council this evening. Make all arrangements.” He paused for a moment and then turned to Jane.
“I am afraid this is very bad for you, my dear,” he said; “and worse for him.”
“You mean for Mark, sir?”
“Yes. Don’t think. hardly of him. He is suffering. If we are defeated we shall all go down with him. If we win we will rescue him; he cannot be far gone yet.” He paused, smiled, and added, “We are quite used to trouble about husbands here, you know. Poor Ivy’s is in jail.”
“In jail?”
“Oh yes-for ordinary theft. But quite a good fellow. He’ll be all right again.”