Doppelgangers Read Online Free

both his shins and, as that limit was reached, the holds were raised. He was loose.
    He stood for a moment, rather expecting a quick blow or perhaps the sudden thrust of the well-known hypodermic in the arm. But no. He listened. He must be alone. Cautiously he bent forward. Surely it couldn’t be anything so old-fashioned as the oubliette. He almost smiled when, putting out his hand gingerly to feel the brink from which he was just curbed below the kneecaps, he felt a bed. As he explored he made its shape, pillow to the right, an extra blanket thoughtfully and neatly folded across the foot. He could not help chuckling when, right in front, he found that not only was the sheet turned back but silk pajamas were laid out—what a neat laying-out our great artist in living does design, nothing neglected.
    He felt his way about. The room was undoubtedly on the small side, and smooth as the inside of an egg, so smooth that you couldn’t feel the door. Well, there was nothing in his store suit with which he had been provided that would give him away. The Mole knew enough about such things for him not to have to think of that. He threw off the coarse cheap worsted, smartly colored and cut as all suitings today were, but tawdry. It was a slight relief to put on the silk.
    Knowing how to wait was part of knowing how to keep cool. You had to live in the actual moment. In fact, he’d been one of the best pupils in the Chen method of standing torture—and the Chinese certainly were good testers—by dividing up the moment of consciousness into finer and finer moments and presents, until the pain impulse couldn’t get through or be sustained. He threw himself on the bed. He found that his mind wished to think of Alie. He let it; that again was part of the drill of detachment. He yawned and threw his arms behind his head. He was quite relaxed. He saw her as vividly as he had those hours ago in the park. They were wandering about together. She had just said that at last she’d found someone who seemed to grow more interesting every time since that first time they met months ago. He was on his back on the grass. It was summer.…
    But why have a rug over one’s feet? The air, too, had a tang. He roused himself. Asleep? He’d never known the exercises to end in unconsciousness until you intended them to! What a fool he was! Of course this was a gas chamber. The air was getting right, however, now. And light was coming. Very little and in a small beam. But it lit one spot and there was a tray. Of course, the stuff might be drugged, but then, what was the need? He’d been knocked out as delicately as a frog is pithed. He felt hungry and, anyhow, if he felt they were using any of the old-fashioned poisons he could always make himself vomit. He ate the meal and it was good. From his appetite he judged he must have been asleep some while.
    The light began to die. It shone, a faint circle, through part of the wall—one of those steel-hard plastics, he thought. Before it went he noticed that his clothes and watch had gone. He lay wide awake and his mind didn’t wander. He was then all the more surprised to hear a slight cough close to him—that kind of gentle clearing-of-the-throat someone will use who wishes deferentially to attract attention.
    â€œWho’s there?” he said, but he didn’t put out his hand. Somehow he shrank from that.
    The replying voice would have been a whisper but there was no sibilance in it: “We want co-operation.” Well, anyone might say that. “We’d much rather have a friend than have to use a tool—have someone who shares our point of view.”
    Yes, that could come from either side. Sometimes messages from the Mole had that sort of beginning. It worked with some people, with most, as long as you were new and had about you a good deal of the old superficial and surface vagueness.
    â€œYou were picked for special