The Dark Door | Page 4

upon tier of smooth,
functional architecture, a city of dreams built up painfully out of the
rubble of the older, ruined city.
"You could kill him," the young man said finally. "The
psycho-integrator isn't any standard interrogative technique; it's
dangerous and treacherous. You never know for sure just what you're
doing when you dig down into a man's brain tissue with those little
electrode probes."
"But we can learn the truth about Harry Scott," Dr. Webber broke in.
"Six months ago, Harry Scott was working with us, a quiet, affable,
pleasant young fellow, extremely intelligent, intensely co-operative. He
was just the man we needed to work with us, an engineer who could
take our data and case histories, study them, and subject them to a
completely nonmedical analysis. Oh, we had to have it done--the
problem's been with us for a hundred years now, growing ever since the
1950s and 60s--insanity in the population, growing, spreading without
rhyme or reason, insinuating itself into every nook and cranny of our
civilized life."
The big man blinked at Manelli. "Harry Scott was the new approach.
We were too close to the problem. We needed a nonmedical outsider to
take a look, to tell us what we were missing. So Harry Scott walked
into the problem, and then abruptly lost contact with us. We finally
track him down and find him gone, out of touch with reality, on the
same wretched road that all the others went. With Harry, it's paranoia.
He's being persecuted; he has the whole world against him, but most
important--the factor we don't dare overlook--he's no longer working
on the problem."

Manelli shifted uneasily. "I suppose that's right."
"Of course it's right!" Dr. Webber's eyes flashed. "Harry found
something in those statistics. Something about the data, or the case
histories; or something Harry Scott himself dug up opened a door for
him to go through, a door that none of us ever dreamed existed. We
don't know what he found on the other side of that door. Oh, we know
what he thinks he found, all this garbage about people that look normal
but walk through walls when nobody's looking, who think around
corners instead of in straight-line logic. But what he really found there,
we don't have any way of telling. We just know that whatever he really
found is something new, something unsuspected; something so
dangerous it can drive an intelligent man into the wildest delusions of
paranoid persecution."
A new light appeared in Dr. Manelli's eyes as he faced the other doctor.
"Wait a minute," he said softly. "The integrator is an experimental
instrument, too."
Dr. Webber smiled slyly. "Now you're beginning to think," he said.
"But you'll see only what Scott himself believes. And he thinks his
story is true."
"Then we'll have to break his story."
"Break it?"
"Certainly. For some reason, this delusion of persecution is far safer for
Harry Scott than facing what he really found out. What we've got to do
is to make this delusion less safe than the truth."
The room was silent for a long moment. Manelli looked up, his fingers
trembling. "Let's hear it."
"It's very simple. Up to now, Harry Scott has had delusions of
persecution. But now we're really going to persecute Harry Scott, as
he's never been persecuted before."

3
At first he thought he was at the bottom of a deep well and he lay quite
still, his eyes clamped shut, wondering where he was and how he could
possibly have gotten there. He could feel the dampness and chill of the
stone floor under him, and nearby he heard the damp, insistent drip of
water splashing against stone. He felt his muscles tighten as the
dripping sound forced itself against his senses. Then he opened his
eyes.
His first impulse was to scream out wildly in unreasoning, suffocating
fear. He fought it down, struggling to sit up in the blackness, his whole
mind turned in bitter, hopeless hatred at the ones who had hunted him
for so long, and now had trapped him.
Why?
Why did they torture him? Why not kill him outright, have done with it?
He shuddered, and struggled to his feet, staring about him in horror.
It was not a well, but a small room, circular, with little rivulets of stale
water running down the granite walls. The ceiling closed low over his
head, and the only source of light came from the single doorway
opening into a long, low stone passageway.
Wave after wave of panic rose in Harry's throat. Each time he fought
down the urge to scream, to lie down on the ground and cover his face
with his hands and scream in helpless fear. How could they have
known the horror that lay in his own