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Chapter 39

 

 

What does being thrown into slow time feel like?

It feels like nothing much at all, except that everything around you goes crazy. There was a quick flash of orange-yellow light. Then something went wrong with my eyes. The Kekketies disappeared. Binnda was gone, leaving only a faint blur of motion to show where he had been. Something slammed against my shoulders, knocking me brutally against the back of my chair. I felt as though I were in a rocket liftoff as, chair and all, I was moved—moved again—set down. No, not set down, I was dashed down, chair and all.

And I stood up out of the chair and looked around, as Conjur did the same thing from the chair beside me.

I was in a place I had never seen before. It was a big room, maybe thirty feet square, furnished like the ambulatory patients' lounge in a rather nice hospital. It seemed really quite incongruously pleasant, considering what it was. Two elderly men were playing gin over in a corner, pausing to look up at the new arrivals, namely Conjur and me. Ephard Joyce was sitting on a couch, his head buried in his hands. There was a table along one wall with sandwich materials and a coffeepot, and a plump young man wearing a gold-braided uniform that looked as though it had come from World War I was lifting a cup to his lips. Corridors went off the room, and I could see, through an open door, a little bedroom with a tall, dark woman sitting on the edge of the bed and yawning.

I say I saw all this, but only in the way that you see a movie set on TV when you've just switched into the channel. I didn't make a careful examination of it. I was too busy looking at a young woman in shocked conversation with a short Oriental man. She (as best I remembered) looked very much like Irene Madigan.

It was she, all right. She turned toward me, eyes wide and wondering. She looked astonished, and shaken, and as though she were about to cry.

I had no doubt of what had happened. We were all in cold storage.

My big worry was how cold I was going to get—cold as in dead, maybe? Were they just holding me temporarily until Dr. Boddadukti or some even worse monster came to sink his fangs into my throat?

I couldn't believe that. I didn't want to believe it; but I reasoned that if they were going to make a Jerry Harper-type spectacle of me they'd do it in Execution Square.

All these things flashed through my mind and reached my senses at once. Very quickly.

"Nolly?" said Irene Madigan inquiringly, coming toward me.

"It's me, all right," I told her. "I'm sorry to see you here."

The little Oriental man was peering over her shoulder. "Who are you?" he asked politely.

I didn't get a chance to answer, because Irene was saying, "Is it true? What Gwan Lee has been telling me? We've all been captured by flying-saucer people?"

"She's quite upset," Gwan Lee said sympathetically. "I suppose you're feeling pretty shaken up, too. You'll want some clothes; but if you just put a note on the skry they'll bring them to you before you know it."

"And why are you in your pajamas?" Irene asked plaintively.

I held up my hands to slow her down. "It's a long story," I began. I started to tell it to her, but I didn't get very far. She made a soft, sobbing sound, and reached out for me. I put my arms around her. "It'll be all right," I whispered to her hair, holding her tight. She just sobbed again. I saw Ephard Joyce looking up at us from his couch, and Conjur standing by his chair, looking angrily amused.

"What's going to happen now?" I asked Conjur, still holding Irene Madigan.

He shrugged. "We stay here, is all. You got any better ideas?"

"Well," I began, patting Irene's back soothingly, "I guess—"

I didn't finish the sentence because something hammered at my chest, where Irene was snuggled against it; I felt my arms thrust away from around her. There was an instant, almost subliminal orange-yellow flash—

My arms were still outstretched, but there was no one inside them. Irene Madigan was gone.

I gaped at Conjur. "What the hell?" I shouted.

He opened his mouth to respond. . . .

Whatever it was he was saying, I didn't hear it. There was another of those flashes, and two Kekketies were beside me, holding me up, while another was turning off his silvery machine.

An Eye of the Mother was peering up at me. "L. Knollwood Stennis," it piped, "the Mother wishes to see you."

I was out of slow time.

I stared about. Conjur was still opening his mouth to address the space where I had been, frozen still. All the others were frozen, too.

I never got to finish any of those conversations. That's not surprising. There's a limit to how much you can say in something less than a minute . . . or (depending on how you look at it) somewhere around a year and a half.

 

 

 

 

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Framed