Logan's Run Read Online Free PDF Page B

hard aluminum ledge rippled, fell away. He was floating out in space with the wind crying around him.
    "Answer the question!" the girl's voice whispered intensely at his ear.
    Logan found himself singing: "Angerman was . . . filled with fury, He the judge and he the jury . . ."
    Logan babbled happily. He was poised in air, looking down at himself sprawled on the ledge. He watched Lilith cuff him across the mouth. He watched her grab his hair and bend his head back.
    "The key —where did you get the key?"
    "Man named 10, named 10, named 10 . . . named Doyle 10."
    Logan's neck ached.
    "Angerman, pursuing faster," he sang. "Ang—Angerman, the angry master."
    He stood up rigidly, with the girl clinging to him. The world was no longer dark; it was filled with blazing orange music which stabbed his eyes.
    "Did you kill Doyle?"
    The orange music stroked him. "Cubs . . . cubs killed him."
    Logan stepped off the ledge. Instinctively he reached out; his clawing fingers found a grip. His head was clearing as he kicked at air. His right foot lodged on a metal projection and slowly, inch by inch, he drew himself back onto the ledge.
    He lay, stomach down, gasping for breath. The girl. She'd drugged his Scotch. With Truthtell. Had he told her too much?
    "What now?" he asked.
    "Go see Doc," she said sweetly. "He's your next contact."
    "Doc who?"
    "In Arcade. Look for The New You. That's his place."
    Logan nodded.
    "Now we go back to Sharps and turn in our peeps. Some lift, eh?"
    "Sure," said Logan. "Some lift."
    He left the belt at the Beverly overpass and began threading his way through Arcade.
    The immense pleasure center formed a never-ending human logjam. Arcade had not closed its doors to funseekers for over fifty years. The place was a vast crazy quilt of hallucimills, Re-Live parlors and fire galleries.
    Signs screamed and moaned in smoky colors: RE-LIVE THAT FIRST EMBRACE! (A gaudy Tri-Dim on a ribbed platform depicting two nude youngsters in a torrid tangle.) RE-LIVE THOSE PRECIOUS MOMENTS! (A wild-eyed boy riding a flamed devilstick through a mock sky.) RE-LIVE! RE-LIVE! RE-LIVE!
    Noise gonged; a thousand odors mingled; hawkers cried their wares. Here night was day and day was night
    "Wanta good time, citizen?" A man with one arm and a fog voice beckoned him toward a swinging door.
    Logan passed him quickly.
    He saw the sign he was looking for. It hit the window in a sulfurous shower and withdrew, hit and withdrew into the darkness behind the black glass. THE NEW YOU . . . THE NEW YOU . . . THE NEW YOU . . .
    Logan entered the shop.
    The waiting room was the color of ashes. The scattered pieces of furniture were faded, worn. Even the air in the room seemed used. An ancient chrome-plated desk hunched in one corner, and behind it sat a young woman in soiled whites. Her face was pale and predatory. She regarded Logan suspiciously. "You want Doc?"
    "I want Sanctuary."
    The girl wet her lips with a small pink tongue. "Then you want Doc."
    She rose listlessly, crossed to Logan. "Hand," she said. He held up his right hand, palm out. Red-black-red-black-red-black . . .
    "C'mon," she said. "Follow through for the new you."
    She led him down a musty hallway and into a large room smelling of metal. Logan recognized the thing in the center of the alum floor; he felt himself ice up. Table! The machine loomed over a flat metal bed that was grooved and slotted and equipped with fastening devices.
    "There's not another like her outside a hospital between here and New Alaska," said a harsh, confident voice.
    Logan whirled to face a thick bodied sixteen-year-old. The man's bony features were split by a crooked-toothed smile. He wore a long gray smock which extended down to his shoe tops. Doc.
    "A little edgy, are you? Well, that's natural. Runners are scared people. Least you got enough sense to start before your flower blacks. It's tougher then, with the Sandmen onto you. What'll it be, face job or full body? Could add a couple inches to those