Part 2

Kane was backing away. The hell with them. He turned and ran for the elevator. Then he remembered that he didn't know what room he was supposed to be checked into. He didn't have a key either. He--

Two smiling men, were on either side of him. In a mirror he could see the half smiling, half concerned faces of Phil and Laura, and the slightly sardonic eyes of Lucille.

"Don't worry, Gang," he heard Phil say. "We're taking a Special room. We'll be together again soon."

"This way," the two young smiling men said. They wore uniforms and appeared to be bellhops. "We'll show you to our room."

* * * * *

The two bellhops started to back out of the room. "What's special about it?" Kane asked. "Only thing I can see about it that could be considered special is that it's about big enough to be someone's closet! I reserved a suite. What kind of a run-around is this anyway?"

It was hardly bigger than a large closet. A white room, with only a single bed in it, and a bureau. Through a narrow, partly open door, he could see a bathroom, and that was it.

"Well," the bellhop said, smiling. "It's our Single."

"You mean you call it special because it's a single," Kane asked.

The bellhops nodded.

"Why?" Kane insisted. "What's special about a single?"

"We only have one single here," the bellhops said. "We hope you are comfortable with us, Professor Kane."

"Look here! Why should you only have one single in this entire hotel? And what's so special about it?"

"This single is seldom demanded by guests," the bellhop said.

"I didn't demand it. I reserved a suite, or at least I understood that my friend, Phil Nordson, reserved a suite. I certainly didn't demand this!"

"But--but of course you did. We have to have a single when we're--not getting along well with ourselves."

Kane started for the door, but the two men backed out and shut it in his face. He tried the knob. The door was locked. He turned quickly and scanned the room, but there was no key visible. Then one of the curtains moved as he walked toward it, and he saw that the narrow window was barred.

As he swept the curtains aside to look out through the bars, and grabbed at the bars in a kind of instinctual gesture, a metal panel slid noiselessly across and shut out a flash of neon light.

He was alone, locked up like a dangerous madman!

* * * * *

By the head of the narrow bed that resembled something antiseptic in a barracks, Kane saw the black eye of a phone peeking out of a niche in the wall.

He pulled it out and jabbed at a button. His throat felt tight and he could feel the pounding of his heart as he leaned against the wall.

"This is Professor Kane, room 2004."

"Yes, we're here."

"And I'm here! In this ridiculous closet. I'm locked in. There must be some sort of mistake. The window--"

"We'll be all right. We'll be fine in a little while."

"Look here--connect me with the cocktail lounge. I want to speak with Phil Nordson. Yes, he's there--"

He heard nothing, absolutely nothing, except his own heart. No clock in the room either. The walls and ceiling had a peculiar grained look.

"Hello, Prof!"

"Phil! Phil, listen, what in the name of God goes on here? I'm locked in! You said you reserved a suite for me, and this room--"

"We aren't going to worry," Phil said. Kane heard laughter in the background and the high-pitched choral voices from the jukebox. "We'll be all right. We figured there would be a little trouble here and there, at first."

"I don't give a damn about a little trouble there! Phil, I'm talking about me, here! I'm locked in. And my luggage. Where is it? And--"

Kane's stomach jumped. A kind of terror hit him like a cold breath. "Phil! My briefcase. Where's my briefcase?"

"We have it somewhere--" Phil was saying. "Just don't let us worry."

Kane heard a clicking sound somewhere and he yelled into the phone but nothing came back. He released the phone and it was sucked back into the wall.

He sank down on the bed and fumbled absently at his coat and then at his necktie. The walls had a blurred quality and he felt on the edge of passing out. He kept thinking of the briefcase, with years of work in it, the equations, more than could be preserved entirely in a man's head.

It was too sickening to think about, the possibility of them losing his briefcase. Phil didn't seem concerned. No one was concerned with his briefcase, that was obvious. The only thing they were concerned about was that he didn't get along with the Gang.

The hell with the Gang, every last one of the Gang. If he never heard of the Gang or saw the Gang again, he would consider himself extremely fortunate.

He felt numb, too tired to think about anything. He fumbled at one shoe, got it off, then worked vaguely at the other one. He would rest, sleep, sleep for a long time, then he would be able to think. He might find this all exaggerated, unreal, once he slept, rested, woke up again.

A man certainly had rights. There was some authority he could contact of course. He was just too upset to think about it anymore.

He had his shirt, his undershirt off. He had his shoes and socks off and he flexed his feet in ecstasy. He unzipped his fly and as he started to stand up to take his pants off, he groaned with fright and fell backward onto the bed.

A chair fused with the bed. Laura was there, sitting on the chair, but also practically sitting in Kane's lap.

He blinked rapidly and reached out, and his hand moved through the image of Laura, only Laura seemed solid, three-dimensional, very real indeed. Too real.

"Get out," he whispered. "What--"

Glass clinked loudly right in the room with him. The jukebox blared.

Kane couldn't move. He sat rigidly, and the table was there, and all the Gang around it, and Phil there smiling and they were all around Kane drinking Scotch, double shots of Scotch, no ice.

Lucille looked across the table and shook her lovely head slightly. There was concern, genuine concern, a kind of sadness, behind the false smile. The smile, he knew, was for the others. But the concern was for him.

Phil raised his glass. Nine glasses were in the air.

"Here's to us, happy Gang, Prof," Phil shouted.

"Here's to us! Here's to Sunny Hill!" they shouted.

Kane slowly moistened his lips. The three walls and the ceiling had come alive. They were actually huge TV screens, and the effect was startlingly three-dimensional. Only the absence of touch could break the illusion. But the visual and the audial made up for the absence of touch. Kane didn't want to touch them anyway. He wanted them to go away, altogether.

His room was crammed with phantoms from the cocktail lounge. In fact, his room was fused with the cocktail lounge. It was all there somehow.

"Go to sleepy-bye," Laura whispered and made a very suggestive gesture. Her cheeks were flushed as she leaned into and through him.

"Take ourselves a good long snooze," Phil grinned. "Don't worry. The Gang's all here."

Lucille said, hardly smiling at all. "No, don't worry, Professor. We'll all sleep with you."

He zipped his pants back up and slid back through several phantom shapes and pressed against the wall.

"Phil," he finally said. "Phil!"

"Aren't you sleepy now?" Phil asked.

"He's sleepy," Laura said. "We're sleeping with you, Professor man."

"Yes, yes I am sleepy. Goodnight now," Kane said. "Goodnight."

He waited. They didn't take the hint. To them it was no hint at all. He knew they weren't going away. He knew that no matter what he said or did, they wouldn't go away. That was the thing he understood, incredible as it was, he knew now that no matter what he said or did, they wouldn't go away.

They only understood that he was somehow ill. He knew that too. They were right, so he was wrong. They thought they were doing what was best for him. That was obvious. It was all over their faces and actions. If they had any idea how he felt, they still considered his feelings only symptoms of some kind, and they seemed confident that Kane would soon be all right.

But his being all right had nothing to do with their going away.

Kane decided not to give way, not to scream or anything absurd like that. It wouldn't do any good. Calm, be calm and--well maybe just try pretending they're not there at all.

Then he remembered the bathroom and ran through several chairs, a table, and three people, and into the bathroom. He slammed the door and leaned against it and let out a long relieved breath.

He was taking off his shorts when the bathroom walls and the ceiling came alive.

What had been labeled "Boy's Room" down in the cocktail lounge was being projected into the bathroom of room 2004.

It wasn't false modesty that prompted Kane's moan. It wasn't any form of prudishness that moved Kane to clutch his undershorts to his body and leap into the shower stall.

It was a panicky realization of the absolutely involuntary nature of the way things were. Strangers, with friendly smiles, everywhere around him all the time, and he, Larry Kane, had nothing--_absolutely nothing to say about it_.

The shower stall with the pulled curtain was no refuge either. There was a superimposed sink in there on the wall with a phantom shape using an electric razor.

Phil and Ben were leaning through the shower curtain. They weren't there for anything specific. They were just there, chatting, smiling, bantering.

Others came in and out of the "Boy's Room" of the cocktail lounge. Everyone said hello, or directed some sort of friendly comment casually at Kane as though superimposed washrooms were the quintessence of social normalcy. And, Kane thought pushing hard at panic, they probably were.

Phil and Ben were there for no other reason than to keep Kane company. To help him. He could see that. No matter how tortured he seemed, their attitude remained that of beneficence. The trouble was all his, and they gave no indication of seeing his side of anything.

Evidently, to them, being alone was the worst thing that could happen to anybody. If he wanted to be alone then he was wrong, he was sick, he was put in a special room. A single. But they wouldn't go away.

He managed to turn on the shower, and he turned his face up to the icy water and closed his eyes and imagined he was back in blessed isolation in the study of the observatory on the Moon. But it was a long long way back to the Moon.

It worked both ways. He could see and hear them. They could hear and see him too, but he determined to do his best to ignore them. The idea of social amenities no longer bothered Kane. Being impolite was an absurdity. Social decency was a mutual thing, and these people weren't considering his rights at all.

He finished his shower and draped the towel around his waist and went back out into the closet they had given him. He walked toward the bed, sidestepping people, chairs, tables still unable to realize fully that these things weren't really here.

The jukebox got louder. A couple danced through him. Suddenly, Kane stood shivering, a raw panic taking hold. Control fled before the rising jukebox clangor, the laughter, the waving and shouting and hideous unwelcome demons of camaraderie.

He felt himself wildly waving his arms about and shouting at the walls.

"Get out! For God's sake get out and let me sleep!"

Ben was staring at Kane from only a few inches away.

"You," Kane pointed a finger at the three dimensional ghost. "You--fade out, go away somewhere. No--no, Phil, not you. Get these other people out. I want to talk to you--Phil--"

"Easy now," Phil said soothingly. "We'll be all right. In a little while now--"

"I am all right, but I won't be if I can't sleep. Phil--can't all this just--just be tuned out or something?"

Kane tried to imagine none of the others were there. Just the small room, himself, and Phil. But the others were all looking at Kane, all of them looking, all of them smiling. Lucille was looking too, but somehow he was sure he could see a reflection of his own feelings in her eyes, hidden, but there.

"We'll be with you all the way," Phil said.

"But how can I sleep with a cocktail lounge full of people all over my bed? Tell me. I'm listening. Tell me how!"

Phil's smile disappeared completely for a brief second. He whispered, close to Kane's ear. "Try to do it, Larry. Please--_try_!"

Kane ran to the wall, clicked the light switch. He knew that the lights in his room went out, but the slightly dimmer lights projected from the cocktail lounge remained. Somehow, that was even worse. It seemed to resemble the implacable characters of a persisting nightmare. Subdued, with the coruscating bubbling play of multicolored light from the jukebox turning a rainbow over and over the ceiling and the bed, and the Gang, the Gang all there like ghosts with greenish faces smiling, sitting, whispering round the bed.

Kane threw himself on the bed and covered his eyes with his arms.

He was going mad with fatigue, and yet he knew he could never sleep, never rest, under these circumstances. It wasn't just the figures there, the lights, the laughter and whispering and the chorus breaking from the jukebox. It was what their being there really meant, the suggestion of the bigger cause behind what was happening to Kane.

A man who fears to sleep in the dark is not really afraid of the dark. But of what is hiding in it.

* * * * *

Shadows moved above his closed lids. Glass tinkled with ice cubes. Under his sweating forearm, his eyes throbbed and his body felt as though the skin had been scraped all over until it was raw.

Kane propped himself on an elbow, and looked to one side at Phil. Phil grinned sympathetically. Laura was in the same cushioned chair, but she seemed to be sitting beside Kane on the bed. Lucille was avoiding looking at Kane.

"Phil."

"Well, Prof, we thought we were getting our sleep!"

"No," Kane whispered. "I can't sleep. I'm asking you, you Phil, and all the rest of you, to let me sleep. I'm asking you to help me in that way, just for a while. I'm imploring you really to just tune yourselves out for a while and let me sleep."

There was something blank, uncomprehending in the way they smiled at him. Kane knew then that they could never allow themselves to try to understand his situation, because then they might question their own. For example, if they've taken refuge in one another from a terrible fear of insecurity, anxiety, and aloneness, then Kane could only represent the threat of reawakened fear.

What was the use?

"We'll turn the lights down low, how would that be, Prof?" Phil asked.

"We'd like that," Laura whispered.

"Don't be afraid, we're with you," Ben said.

"We'll sing you into dreamland," Jenny said.

"Don't be afraid. We're all together and our Gang is with you," someone else said. It didn't matter who really, Kane thought, because they all spoke not as individuals but as the Gang.

"Through sunshine and in shadow," Lucille said.

The lights dimmed slowly as Kane curled up on the bed and clenched his eyes shut. He pulled the sheet up over his face. He pressed his fingers into his ears. But it wouldn't work. Nothing like that would do any good. You couldn't shut off indignity such as this. You couldn't block out such an intrusion of spirit and human dignity by burying your head, or pressing your ears.

You could try, but not very long, not when you knew it wouldn't do any good.

He had no idea now what time it was, how long he had been here. He had tried to spot a wall clock somewhere in the cocktail lounge, but none was within view. That didn't help either, this timeless feeling. That only enhanced the similarity it all had to a persisting nightmare.

It was a gnawing murmur all around him. It was like a hollow tooth. The softened sounds of their voices going on and on was maddening because they were softened. Softened for him, yet they were still there. He felt like an irritated baby sleeping while adults talked, pretending to soften their voices.

His body was slimy with sweat, and his head pounded with a dull ache. He jumped out of bed and ran straight through Laura to the wall and jerked the phone from its slot.

He yelled into it.

"This is Professor Larry Kane. Room 2004. I'm checking out. Send someone up here with a key! I said send someone up here...."

"We understand, Professor Kane."

"Then you'll send someone up immediately with a key!"

"Please don't get upset. The Staff has been busy, but now the Staff will soon be with you."

The Staff....

"I just want a key, I want to get the hell out of here!"

Kane yelled several times into the phone after the click, but no voice came back. He had grabbed up the table, the metal table at the head of the bed, and flung it into the wall before he realized what he was doing.

The shadows moved toward him. Phil, Laura, Ben, Jenny, Lawrence, Lucille, all the others, nameless, what did it matter anyway, their names?

They were smiling, holding out their arms to him. Compassionate, sympathy, they had it all. All they wanted to do was help him.

He ran through them back toward the bathroom. It was still full of men from the downstairs john. "What time is it?" Kane yelled at someone with a paper towel pressed to his eyes.

"'Bout three I'd say, what a night!"

"Three--"

Three o'clock in the morning, but the fact was Kane wasn't sure about the day. He backed out of the bathroom, slammed the door.

"The Staff is ready, Prof," Phil said.

"We're all with you, aren't we?" Laura giggled.

The closet.

Kane ran into the closet and slammed the door. There was something immediately cozy in the narrow black confines of the closet. Either closet walls weren't TV screens, or they had decided to let him sleep at last. Probably the former. Better convert closets to Television. In case kiddies misbehave and get locked in the closet, they'll not be alone in there....

He curled up on the floor in the pitch blackness and almost immediately began to drift off into sleep. The narrow darkness tightened around him like a thick comforting blanket on a cold night....

Sometime later--he had no idea how much time had passed--a light was blinking at his lids. He opened them slowly and stared into a flickering yellow eye.

A doorhinge creaked. Up there somewhere a voice said pleasantly:

"Professor Kane, your Staff is here."

"Staff?" he whispered, trying to see above the blinking light.

"We're here."

* * * * *

The TV walls were dead now, but that was hardly consoling. The overhead light was glaring with an intense whiteness. The three members of the Staff were busy, and Kane was being Tested.

Kane had emerged from the closet determined to remain as rational as possible, to control his emotions, and find out what he could about his human rights as an individual.

That was easy to find out and only required a few questions honestly and frankly answered.

As a minority, Kane had no rights whatsoever.

He had one big right, the right to think as the majority did. But that didn't count for much yet because Kane was ill, maladjusted and had anti-group feeling.

The Staff was going to test him, find out what was wrong with Kane. And this of course implied that when they found out what was wrong, the difficulty would be taken care of.

The Staff was kind, considerate, almost excessively polite considering the circumstances. They were young efficient men with crewcuts, briefcases, and wearing tight conservative dark suits. Only slight differences in build distinguished them one from another, but this superficial outward difference only seemed to emphasize the Staff's basic unity, its Group Spirit, its Staff Consciousness.

Every public institution, every business establishment, every school, club, hotel, factory, office building--in short, everywhere that people congregated in official Groups, there was a regular Staff on duty twenty-four hours a day.

They were Integrators. Glorified personnel men.

Electrodes were clamped on Kane's head and wrists. Something was strapped around his chest. Wires ran into a miniature Reacto. A stylus began to make jagged lines on a strip of moving tape.

"We're getting a complete personality checkup," the Staff said.

It was indeed complete. It was as complete as a personality checkup could be short of an actual dissection.

Kane looked at countless ink-blots. He was shown a great many pictures and whether he answered verbally or not was of no concern of the Staff.

Whatever his reactions were, they were all analyzed by the machines. Words weren't necessary. The Staff had a shortcut to personality checkups. From the mind right into the machine.

The Staff only interpreted the results, or maybe they didn't even do that. It was more likely that machines did that too.

Kane protested for a while, but he was too tired to protest very long. He asked them a great many questions, and they answered them willingly enough--up to a point. They were interested in his questions too. He was an interesting symptom, but actually he knew that they already had him pretty well tabbed.

They answered his questions the way big-hearted adults answered inquisitive children.

"We must," the Staff said, "determine why you don't fit in."

Kane talked about his work, his theories, his years of devotion to what he had always considered to be a contribution to society. They hardly seemed interested. What good was all that--astronomy and such--when a man was not happy with others?

"What about this aversion to people?" the Staff said, in a kindly way. "This--well--clinically, this de-grouping syndrome. This antagonism to the group spirit."

"You mean my reaction to Phil and his friends?"

"Your friends. Your Group," The Staff said.

"But I don't dislike those people," Kane insisted. "Certainly, I have no aversion to them! Hell, I don't even _know_ them."

"But they're people," the Staff said. "Part of the family of man."

"I know that. But I was tired and wanted to sleep!"

"You'll find the true group Spirit," the Staff said. "Let us ask you this, Professor Kane. If you really had no aversion to people generally, why would you object to them being with you? Why should the presence of people disturb your sleep? Wouldn't a healthy person enjoy sleeping with others merely because they were there? Doesn't one sleep best among friends, knowing he isn't alone, knowing even his sleep is shared--"

There was a great deal more, but it all boiled down to the same thing.

Kane was wrong.

And he didn't have the right to be wrong.

* * * * *

They, or rather it, the Staff, seemed to concentrate on the whole question of why Kane had ever volunteered for a job demanding extreme isolation in the first place. The point was that apparently Kane had been anti-social, a Group Spirit deviant from the beginning.

Kane tried to explain it, calmly at first, then more emotionally. Either way, he knew that whatever he said was only additional grist to their syndrome recording mill. Being alone in order to do certain kinds of work demanding isolation seemed to be beside the point.

The point was that being on the Moon deprived a man of Groups. It was a kind of psychological suicide. Now that he was back home they would straighten him out. The question of returning to the Moon was ignored. To them, this was an absurdity. What did Kane want?

Kane was in no position to know what he really wanted--yet. They were going to help him decide what he really wanted. But they already knew that. It only remained for Kane to agree with them.

The majority was always right.