The Telenizer

Excerpt

When I saw the blood dripping from the tap in the bathtub, I knew that someone had a telenosis beam on me, and I breathed a very audible sigh of relief.

During the past few days, I had begun to wonder if I was really cracking up.

When you start seeing visions of a bearded gent with a halo, or having vague but wonderful dreams about some sort of perfect world, feeling intense loyalties to undefined ideals, and experiencing sudden impulses, sometimes cruel and sometimes kind—you know that something's wrong.

At least I do.

If he—whoever he was—had just kept up the slow, subtle pace he'd maintained for the past two or three days, he would have had me in a little while. For whatever he wanted.

But now, he'd overplayed his hand. I knew, at least, what was going on. Who was doing it, or why, I still didn't know—nor whether I could stand it, even knowing.

The thick, bright red blood dripping steadily from the water tap in the bath tub wasn't so bad.

I stood before the mirror, with my softly humming razor in my hand, and I watched the blood ooze from the tap, quiver as it grew heavy and pregnant, then pull itself free and fall with a dull plonk to the enamel as another drop began to form.

That wasn't so bad. But my sigh of relief became a gurgle of almost hysterical apprehension as I braced myself for what might come, with the telenizer knowing that I was aware.

There was something I could do—should do—but my mind refused to focus. It bogged down in a muck of unreasoning terror and could only scream Why? Why? Why?

The drops of blood from the water tap increased both in size and rapidity, as I watched. Heavy, red, marble-sized tears followed one another from the tap, plonk, plonk, plonk, splashing in the tub and on the floor. Faster and faster, and then the drip became a flow, a gush, as though the vein of some giant creature had been slashed.

The tub filled rapidly, and blood flowed like a crimson waterfall over the edge and across the floor toward me.

I heard a tiny howling, and looked down.

I screamed and threw the soft, brown, fuzzy, squirming puppy-thing that had been a razor into the advancing tide of blood.

The fuzzy thing shattered when it hit the blood, and each of the thousand pieces became another tiny puppy-thing that grew and grew, yapping and swimming in the blood. The tide was now rising about my shoes.

I backed away from the mirror, trembling violently. I forced myself to slosh through the thick blood into the bedroom, groping for a bottle of whisky on the bureau.

"What the hell are you doing here?" the boss asked when I opened his office door and peeked in. "You're supposed to be in Palm Beach. Well, damn it, come on in!"

I clung to the door firmly as I maneuvered myself through the opening. And when I closed the door, I leaned back against it heavily.

I could see the boss—Carson Newell, managing editor of Intergalaxy News Service—half rising from behind his big desk across the room; but he was pretty dim and I couldn't get him to stay in one place. His voice was clear enough, though:

"Must be mighty important to bring you back from.... Damn it, Langston, are you drunk?"

I grinned then, and said, "Carshon....