The Light-Kill Affair Read online

  There was no sign of Illya Kuryakin in the corridor. Solo felt ill, searching for him.

  Strength had returned to his legs and arms by the time the guards led him inside Nesbitt's white-walled office.

  Bikini jumped up and ran to him.

  She pressed herself against him. Solo gritted his teeth to keep from falling under the pressure of her weight.

  "Oh, Solo. He won't look at me," Bikini said. "He won't listen to me. He acts as if I don't exist."

  "I don't think any of us exist for him very much, Bikini," Solo said.

  "But he's known me since I was a baby. He's my godfather. He was at my house all the time."

  "I don't think he cares to re member that." Solo looked up at Nesbitt behind his desk. He spoke over the top of Bikini's dark hair, "Where is Illya, Doctor?"

  Nesbitt smiled blandly. "You'll join him soon enough, Mr. Solo. Need I say any more than that?"

  Bikini turned, but remained in side the circle of Solo's arms. She stared up at Nesbitt. "Please, where is my father?"

  Solo stared up at Nesbitt, waiting for him to answer. But Nesbitt merely shrugged.

  Solo knew he owed Bikini the truth about her father. But the truth was too brutal for her at this moment.

  Just now he could not bring himself to say the words, your father is dead, Bikini.

  He stood, watching Nesbitt.

  The doctor's good eye gazed at him unblinkingly, the smile set. "I'm afraid my plans for you have been altered—by your own actions. I'd hoped to be able to allow the three of you to leave this place after undergoing a series of minor treatments for the removal of recent memory."

  He shook his head. "I can't do that now. I'm sorry. The risk is too great."

  Solo spoke coldly to Bikini. "What Dr. Nesbitt means is that Illya and I know your father is dead, and how he was killed—and that 'memory' removal is too risky because it doesn't work, but death does."

  "My father," Bikini whispered. She pressed her face hard upon Napoleon's shoulder.

  He touched her hair, gently, holding her. He felt her heated tears against his shoulder. Somehow it gave the world a sense of sanity that a girl could still cry for her father in this place.

  It seemed less a nightmare.

  Nesbitt's voice cut across Solo's thoughts. "Death. Yes, death works. Death is useful here, too, Solo. Professor Connor's death was useful—"

  "You told us you didn't know about his death," Solo raged.

  Dr. Nesbitt shrugged as if reminding him that nothing could matter less than what he said to them, or to anyone from the world of his past.

  "He was sentenced to death by our highest court," Nesbitt said. "There was nothing I could do except see that he was executed in the way that would be most useful to us. Yes, even death must be useful."

  Solo shook his head, hearing the doctor's words, but unable to believe a man could have so far receded from any human feelings of remorse, guilt, love or regret.

  Dr. Nesbitt regretted nothing except time lost from his experiments.

  "I'm sure our deaths will serve you in some useful purpose," Solo said bitterly.

  "When the time comes. Meantime, you and Mr. Kuryakin will work for us as mindless slaves—made mindless by light, Mr. Solo. And as for Miss Connors, I can use her body in my experiments with my plants—"

  "Dr. Nesbitt. Ivey!" Bikini cried out, tormented. "What's happened to you? Once you loved my father and me."

  "It's no good, Bikini," Scio said. "He's gone crackers—"

  "You think I'm insane, Solo?" Dr. Nesbitt raged.

  Solo shrugged. "I suspected it all along. I'm convinced, now that you've decided to use a body like hers as plant food—"

  "Mr. Solo, I assure you that only the plants are important here. They are mutations, grown from the most ordinary jungle carnivorous species, from those pitcher plants devouring flies and insects to what you saw in that hothouse—"

  "Oh, Ivey," Bikini wailed. "Once you were the most beloved man in—"

  "A fool girl like that, what does she know?" Dr. Nesbitt said to Solo, still refusing to speak directly to the daughter of his old associate. "Does she know of the horror of being stared at like a freak because of my disfigured face?"

  "That's not true!" Bikini cried. "Nobody ever—"

  "What does she know of the way I lived, dreading the way people cringed at the sight of my face? They wouldn't even let me work in peace until I came here.

  "My plants don't cringe from me. My mindless slaves neither see nor react to my face. I don't have to watch people turn away."

  "You're buried here," Solo said. "Worse than buried."

  "That's where you're so wrong. Solo. Perhaps I shall yet control the world." Nesbitt looked around him now as though he wished to talk more fully about himself and his work.

  "I shall set the world free by the use of light, Mr. Solo. I'm sure you've heard the theory that all light rays enter the eyes of animals and people, directly influencing the pituitary gland.

  "In the same general way light radically affects the growth of plants. Scientists have exposed young rats to the rays of television rays and they die of severe brain damage within twelve days. By my own application of this theory I have made my slaves mindless.

  "And I use the same X-ray light that comes from TV tubes, many times intensified. My jungle plants exposed to this X-ray light grow at phenomenal speed and to unheard of sizes.

  "Light, Mr. Solo. Light to control. Light to kill. Light to grow. Everything subject to the intensity of my X-ray light. From a glow soft enough to be harmless to strength to register wildly on a Geiger counter. With light I shall control the world."

  "Sure. And THRUSH lets you believe that you will. In exchange for what? For those plants which will grow and multiply and kill?"

  Nesbitt smiled. "That is part of my experiment."

  He shook his head and lowered his voice to that reasonable tone so characteristic of the deranged, "So you can see why I cannot permit you people to leave here—to spread the word of my work?"

  THREE

  ILLYA FELT himself being lifted up from the corridor floor where he'd crumpled like a bug when stunned by the light beam.

  The men lifting him carried him loosely between them. They did not speak to each other, moving like robots.

  Double doors swung open in the corridor walls ahead of them and Illya saw he was being carried into a room of dark chocolate walls with hundreds of small lights set under the ceiling, across it, and along the sills.

  The guards placed him in an ordinary appearing chair which lighted up under his weight.

  When he attempted to stand, Illya found he was helpless to move. The action of the light was like a terrible magnet holding him pinned to the chair.

  There was no pain of any kind. It was simply impossible to break the pull of the light-magnets which secured him in the strange chair.

  After a moment Kuryakin stopped fighting. He felt the strength return to his arms and legs. He still had a sense of being dizzy, but even this lessened after a few moments. He examined the chair as the guards backed out of the room.

  The doors closed and locked, Illya supposed. He looked around, finding the room extremely dark and himself seated in the lighted chair like an illumined island.

  He shifted his weight, attempted to raise his arms from the chair.

  He could not move. The darkness seemed to press in upon him, and he had the eerie sense that unseen eyes probed at him from the walls.

  Illya felt a desperate urge to cry out, but he did not. He wouldn't give hidden onlookers the satisfaction.

  Suddenly he heard the crackling noise such as a TV tube made warming up, and a forty inch screen suddenly lightened the dark wall directly before him.

  Dr. Nesbitt's scarred face appeared upon the screen. His mouth pulled into a mocking smile. He said, "Are you comfortable, Mr. Kuryakin?"

  Illya did not answer.

  "Quite secure, Mr. Kuryakin? By now, I'm sure you're convinced yo
u cannot get out of that chair until I want you out of it. Eh?"

  Illya waited. He hated this weird darkness. The television screen flickered, the gray shadows leaping across him, Dr. Nesbitt's strange eyes fixed upon him.

  "The tests I'm about to subject you to, Mr. Kuryakin," Dr. Nesbitt said from the screen in his best lecture tone, "will be most fascinating to you, I'm sure, as long as you retain your senses."

  The screen remained lighted, but Dr. Ivey Nesbitt's broken face disappeared.

  "You look better like that," Illya said to the blank screen.

  Illya heard the dim hum as some small motor was activated. The strip of flooring upon which his lighted chair was secured moved suddenly, sliding backward about ten feet.

  The screen gradually darkened and the multicolored lights flashed on, along the ceiling and the floor. Somehow the room remained dark despite the many lights, and then Illya supposed this was caused by the action of one set of colored lights upon another.

  His eyes burned slightly so that he wanted to rub them, but he could not lift his hand to his face.

  The small motor hummed again and the strips before and behind the chair slowly folded over him and locked, making a wide circle.

  After a moment the motor engaged again and two sections of the flooring on each side of him locked into place, securing him and the lighted chair inside a dark drum.

  The lights on the chair flared and died, leaving him in darkness. The magnetic power was cut off, but now there was nowhere to go. There was not even room enough to stand up inside the drum.

  Nesbitt's voice pursued him, even here. "Pain from light, Mr. Kuryakin. Are you acquainted with the phenomenon? I assure you, you will be well versed in the subject soon. The simplest application I can give to prepare you for what's going to happen to you is that of the young children, sitting for hours two to three feet from a television set. They suffer all manner of illnesses, including emotional disturbances, all induced by the X-ray light from that tube. The larger the picture tube, the greater the voltage.

  "In other words, the greater intensification of that X-ray light, the more pain induced. We use this principle, Mr. Kuryakin, but of course, for our purposes, we have greatly refined it, and find that colored lights offer a great deal more intensity, just as does a colored tv picture tube."

  The voice snapped off and for a moment the silence and darkness persisted until Illya thought Nesbitt had gone away and forgotten him.

  Somewhere a switch clicked, small motors hummed, and the first banks of lights flooded the drum. For a long time they remained constant, and then they alternated, colors flashing around and around the drum, faster and faster.

  Illya Kuryakin sweated. For a long time he was conscious of no other reaction to the lights.

  They grew brighter, the colors alternating in some crazy scheme. The effect was of a clockwise flashing of lights, until suddenly Illya felt himself and the chair following, the drum turning with the lights, but at first slowly. Illya felt slightly nauseated.

  He closed his eyes tightly. He could still see the lights, still felt the drum spinning him over backwards. He pressed his hands over his eyes, and realized the chair was stationary, the drum was not moving, only the whirling lights caused the sickening sensation of spinning.

  He pressed his arm over his eyes. Sweat burned into them. He cried out involuntarily.

  Although he pressed his arm tightly across his eyes, he suddenly could see the flashing lights through them!

  The strength of those lights had been intensified. He could not escape them. After a moment the chair seemed to tilt backwards, to tip, fall and then turn, following those flashing lights.

  Illya Kuryakin gagged, sick at his stomach.

  The lights whirled faster and faster. He screamed as he wheeled and skidded, spinning around and around in the immobile chair, the unmoving drum…

  The lights flashed off. At least Illya Kuryakin thought they did. The sides of the drum lowered; the top pieces unlocked and folded down.

  Though he was sick at his stomach, Illya's mind was clear enough to warn him to get out of that chair.

  He lunged upward.

  He was not quick enough. The lights flashed on, the magnetic power of the chair held him securely. The chair slid forward.

  For a long time he could feel the lights still spinning inside his head. Buckets of hot water were thrown on him, followed by buckets of cold water.

  A voice from somewhere told him to rest. He did not recognize the voice. There was an almost kindly timbre in it, and he thought wildly that the speaker might have human emotions, if only he could appeal to him.

  But then the voice died away and he was left locked in the chair, a bright white island in the chocolate darkness.

  Illya Kuryakin didn't know how long it was before he was returned to the light drum—perhaps hours, or days, or only minutes. His head ached and time had already lost meaning.

  He closed his eyes against the whirling lights, but this did not help. The bright colors penetrated first his eyelids, then seemed to enter at his temples, throbbing behind his eyeballs, twanging at the taut nerves. He pressed his fists hard against his temples and then the steady beams of colored lights battered at his forehead, at the base of his skull, the crown of his head.

  Illya's head ached excruciatingly now. Even when he came out of the drum, was doused with water, fed something which would not stay on his stomach, and told to rest, the headache persisted.

  The human body might become accustomed to anything, even the throb of a headache if it remained constant. But the pressures, the intensity of the light was increased, lessened, speeded up.

  And he spun in the drum, screaming against it, until he could not even hear his own screaming.

  He could feel his nerves going.

  He wanted to break down into tears, to cry over nothing.

  The lights never stopped whirling for him now, even when he knew they were off and he was outside the drum. They whirled, jabbing like lances through his brain.

  The kindly voice asked him what day it was, and Illya could not answer. And after a long time the gentle questioner inquired Illya's name, and Illya could not answer.

  He no longer knew.

  For a few brief moments when he was doused with the buckets of ice water, Illya had lucid thoughts. He knew his name. He knew why he had come to this place. He remembered the lights. He remembered the kindly voice, the way he strained, listening for it, how lost he was when it went away and left him in the darkness.

  Then the hot water would strike him and the lights would whirl.

  In his lucid moments he warned himself his mind was going, his nerves already frayed, his emotions damaged. He had to cling to some thought that had nothing to do with this place. As the cold water struck him, he remembered New York, the restaurants, the Village, the subways, the sun on the United Nations complex early in the morning.

  He gritted his teeth, swearing to hold these thoughts, to shut out what was happening to him.

  The hot water washed it away.

  He'd long since lost count of how many times he had been placed inside the drum. He never escaped the lights except for the briefest moments. The ice water no longer felt cold. Now there was no difference between hot and cold.

  He'd trap a thought of some distant place, but the first whirling of the lights fragmented the thoughts; he was unable to hold on to them.

  The light intensified, and so did the pain.

  As the drum parted and the chair slid forward his wrist watch scratched his cheek.

  Frantically, he grabbed the watch band, jerked the watch from his wrist.

  The motor hummed, the short slide was almost over, the immobilizing lights would flash on. Or maybe they no longer bothered to magnetize him to the chair. Illya didn't know.

  His mind could contain only the thought of the watch. He smashed it in his palm on the arm of the chair.

  Trembling, he shook the broken shards of glass into his
mouth, and dropped the watch.

  At this instant the water struck him. He chewed sharp pieces of glass, feeling it cut his gums, his tongue, the roof of his mouth. He chewed again. Blood oozed from his lips.

  Kuryakin could feel the temperature of the water. It was cold.

  FOUR

  SOLO PROWLED the small room which adjoined one of the thickly grown hothouses.

  Bikini slumped against one of the three solid walls. She cried for a long time, her dark head pressed into her arms.

  Solo stood at the fourth wall. It was thick green glass and afforded a view of the lushly growing cannibal plants out there.

  He shook his head. He had no way to break this glass, yet it was almost as if Nesbitt wished he would. It was as though they dared him and Bikini to attempt to escape across that tangled growth.

  He drew his arm across his forehead, wiping away perspiration. The cell was as hot as the hothouse beyond the glass, and more breathless.

  The door was thrust open and Solo looked in that direction.

  A guard stood at the opened door with a light-gun in his arms. Another entered the small hot room. He walked slowly, like a spring-wound toy that has run down.

  His face was set, his eyes vacant. He faltered slightly.

  Solo caught his breath. The man's face was battered, his hands cut. This was the man who had fought him at the canyon ledge, the one he'd left dangling over the precipice. He had hit him in the face with his shoe until the pain somehow got through to his consciousness.

  The guard looked at Napoleon Solo, shook his head in an almost imperceptible movement, then he turned and walked, still faltering, toward Bikini.

  Solo set himself to jump the guard if he harmed Bikini. He closed the armed sentry at the door from his mind. It might be the last thing he ever did for Bikini.

  But the guard merely drew a folded sheet of paper from his tunic.

  He held it out toward Bikini in a quivering hand.

  Solo caught his breath. He recognized the form, it was a 'a summons to death' like the one delivered to Bikini's father at the hotel in Big Belt.

  Bikini took it. She didn't even glance at it. She recognized it, too.