The Whole Man by John Brunner Read Free Book Online Page A

sight.
    The district changed again; there were small stores, bars, music bellowing, TV sets playing silently in display windows to an audience of steam irons and fluorescent lamps. He kept moving.
    Then, abruptly, there were blank walls, twelve feet high, in gray concrete and dusty red brick. He halted, thinking confusedly of prison, and turned at hazard to the right. In a while he realized where he had come to; he was close to the big river up which Cudgels had tried to sneak his half-million worth of—of whatever it was. Signs warned him that this was east main dock bonding zone for dutiable goods and there was no admission without authority of chief customs inspector.
    The idea of “authority” blended with his confused images of police hounding him. He changed direction frantically, and struck off down a twisting alley, away from the high imprisoning wall. In all his life he had never driven himself so hard; the pain in his legs was almost unendurable. And here there was a fearful silence, not heard with the ears, but experienced directly: whole block–sized areas empty of people, appalling to Howson, the city child, who had never slept more than twenty feet from another person.
    The alley was abruptly only half an alley. The wall on his left ended, and there was bare ground enclosed with wire on wooden poles. He blinked through semidarkness, for there were few lamps. The promise of haven beckoned: the waste ground was the site of a partly demolished warehouse, the rear section of which still stood. Hung on the wire, smeared with thrown filth, were weathered boards: for sale—purchaser to complete demolition.
    He grubbed along the base of the wire fence like a snuffling animal, seeking a point of entry. He found one, where children, presumably, had uprooted a post and pushed it aside. Uncaring that he was smearing himself with mud by crawling through the gap, he twisted under the wire and made his way to the shelter of the ruin.
    As he fell into the lee of a jagged wall, his exhaustion, shock and terror mingled, and a wave of blackness gave him release.
     
    His waking was fearful, too. It was the first time in his life that he saw, on waking, without opening his eyes, and the first time he saw himself.
    The circuit of consciousness closed, and muddy images came to him, conflicting with the evidence of his familiar senses. He felt stiff, cold; he knew his weight and position, flat on his back on a pile of dirty old sacks, his head raised a little by something rough and unyielding. Simultaneously he knew gray half-light, an awkward, twisted form like a broken doll with a slack face—his own, seen from outside. And blended with all this, he was aware of wrong physical sensations: of level shoulders, which he had never had, and of something heavy on his chest, but pulling down and forward—another deformity?
    Then he understood, and cried out, and opened his eyes, and fright taught him how to withdraw from an unsought mental link. He struck out and found his hands tangled in a rope of greasy hair, a foot away from him.
    A stifled moan accompanied his attempt to make sense of his surroundings. He hadn’t fallen on his back when he passed out; certainly he hadn’t fallen on this makeshift bed: so he had been put there. And this would be the person responsible: this girl kneeling at his side, with the coarse, heavy face, thick arms, wide, scared eyes.
    Scared of me! Never before was anyone scared of me!
     
    But even as he prepared savagely to enjoy the sensation, he discovered that he couldn’t. The sense of fear was like a bad smell in his nostrils. Convulsively he let go the tress of hair he had seized, and the fear diminished. He pushed himself into a sitting position, looking the girl over.
    She appeared to be about sixteen or seventeen, although her face was not made up as was customary by that age. She was blockily built, poorly clothed in a dark- gray coat over a thin cotton dress; the garments were clean, but