Norcriss, Jerry (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
Then his shoulders slumped, and he turned and walked toward the
elevators. Burgess was right. He felt worn out, and uninclined to make
grandstand plays. Besides, he thought, thumbing the elevator button,
it would be nice to see the _real_ Carol again, after her nebulous
pseudo-self. He wanted very much to put his arms around a girl who
wouldn't suddenly turn into something horrible in his embrace.
The steel doors slid open before him, and the elevator boy leaned out
to check the corridor for other passengers. "Down," he said. Jerry
nodded and started into the elevator.
Then he hesitated, and looked back toward the room where Mawson reigned
supreme, then back at the elevator boy. "Say," he said, uncertainly,
"that's a strange outfit for an elevator attendant in a hospital. I'd
have expected an orderly in an all-white getup."
The boy glanced down at his uniform, the bright blue pants, shined
black shoes, and scarlet jacket bright with twin rows of brass buttons.
"I suppose it is," he said. "But I don't usually run this elevator. I'm
from the hotel next door. I'm just doing this while the regular guy
takes his coffee break."
Jerry hesitated, then stepped toward the waiting elevator with its
pale gray walls. And stopped again. His hand went to his forehead,
bewilderedly. "There's something--" he said.
Then Carol was beside him, slipping her arm through his. "Come on,
Jerry," she said urgently. "We'll be late for our date."
Jerry looked at her, then at the hotel corridor behind her, then again
at the waiting elevator.
"I have the oddest feeling something's wrong," he said. "I--I don't
remember coming over here for you."
"You didn't," she said promptly. "I came for you, Jerry. This is your
hotel, remember? Doctor Burgess said you'd had a bad shock, but I
didn't know how bad till now."
"Shock?" said Jerry. "What shock? What was bothering me?"
Carol smiled tightly. "Nothing. Nothing at all. Come on, Jerry,
darling." Again she drew him toward the elevator.
"If I could only remember," he said, uneasily, on the brink of that
open cube of bright grayness. Then his eyes focused upon the brass
buttons fronting the boy's jacket, and at his own shadow as it passed
across those glowing hemispheres. As the shadow crossed a button, the
color would die, and the button would be dull crystal, and then glow
bright and brassy again when the shadow had passed.
"Photoelectric cells!" said Jerry. "Light-sensitive cells. Those aren't
buttons, they're eyes! Multiple robot eyes!" He staggered away from the
boy. Carol stopped him.
The elevator boy, suddenly half again Jerry's height, was towering
over him, long steel arms extending like hooked telescopes toward him.
"Get in, Jerry, get _in_!" cried Carol, struggling to push him forward
toward those invincible metal clamps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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