Now Garrison could only remember the food and drink (though not the actual sensation of eating and drinking), and something of the feeling of well-being which had come afterwards. The desert had been just such a crisis an episode which, like the others before it, had now all but passed into the limbo of lost memories. And after that, if he found nothing and no one - which he suspected would be the case, for if there were a human adversary at work here he must be extremely clever and unlikely to let himself be discovered - then Wyatt must simply deny him access to the room of the machine, which he could do easily enough.īut between times, in the room of the machine. One sure way to check for outside interference would be, quite simply, to search the house from top to bottom. Then, leaving the room, he padlocked the door and pocketed the keys.
WAR OF THE GODS USTREAM FULL
Wyatt returned to the machine room, gave Garrison an opiate booster, turned up fear-stimulation to the full and jammed the controls firmly in that position. He had not noticed the missing milk or sandwiches.Īnd yet. They seemed almost to shut him in.īy 5.15 A.M.
They seemed to weigh on him with the weight of the Universe. Not before that time and never since, until now, had Garrison suffered claustrophobia. It seemed that Psychomech could only help him - and conversely that he could only help the Machine - in a real crisis.
There were no scraps of food in his mouth, no spilled liquids, and he must certainly have choked if it were attempted.ĭraining feeling which came whenever the Machine suffered a power loss and he had been powerless to do anything about it. How had he been fed? -that was anybody's guess. Not by Psychomech, no, for the machine's feeding was really recycling and more on the psychical than the physical side. Not only had the control panel been interfered with but Garrison had been fed.
WAR OF THE GODS USTREAM CRACKED
Īnd coming awake when once more the sun had fallen upon him, he had seen that they were through the pass and that the river's bed was dry and cracked in places, and that the surrounding land was weathered into strange formations here, and the Machine moved more slowly under heavy, dark and oppressive skies. Not only was there no one there, there were nq signs that anyone had been there. Up and downstairs, the cellar, the attic, all the larger cupboards. And as the machine had followed the stream through the great and rambling V of the deep cleft, so Garrison had once more slept upon its broad back. It was crazy, ridiculous, but it was the only solution.Īfter that he had climbed aboard the revitafized Machine to ride it out of the desert into a green and beautiful valley, and for some little time - though time as a real concept did not have a great deal of meaning here - he had followed a tinkling stream to where it cut a cleft through a range of high, domed hills.
Someone was here, in this very house, right now. Someone, some unknown but very real and physical one, had somehow been in here and turned down the fear-stimulation controls, releasing Garrison from his nightmares. And at 6.30, after a hot shower, he allowed himself to fall asleep for two hours, only waking up at Tern's insistent ringing at the doorbell. Psychomech would do the job, he was sure.
he felt an almost irresistible urge to check Garrison's condition, but somehow managed to fight it ?off.
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