Wine of the Dreamers Read Online Free PDF Page A

than a technician,” Bard Lane said quickly. “Kornal is a competent physicist with over five years at Brookhaven.”
    “I’ll accept that,” Sachson said. His eyes were cool. “But it shouldn’t be necessary to keep reminding you, Dr. Lane, that I wish answers from the person addressed.” He turned his attention back to Kornal. “You smashed delicate equipment. Do you know the penalties for willful destruction of government property?”
    “That isn’t important,” Kornal said bleakly.
    General Sachson smiled. “I consider that to be a very peculiar statement. Possibly you can explain it to me.”
    “General,” Kornal said, “the Beatty One means more to me than I could explain to you. I’ve never worked harder for anything in my life. And I was never happier. I don’t care if the punishment is boiling in oil.”
    “You have a strange way of expressing your great regard for Project Tempo. Maybe you can tell us why you destroyed government property.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Possibly you don’t want to tell us who employed you to smash the panels?” Sachson said in a silky voice.
    “All I can do is tell you the way I told Bar—–Dr. Lane, General. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I put my clothes on and went out for some air and a smoke. I was standing outside when all of a sudden the cigarette fell out of my hand. Like somebody took over my hand and opened the fingers. Like I was being pushed back into a little corner of my mind, where I could look out, but I couldn’t do anything.”
    “Hypnotized, I suppose,” Sachson said acidly.
    “I don’t know. It wasn’t like when they give you that hypnotic drug. My own mind wasn’t fogged up. Just shoved back into a corner. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
    “So there you were with your mind in a corner. Continue, please.”
    “I went over to where the carpenters had been putting up a new bunkhouse. The plumbers had left some lengthsof pipe around. I picked up a short length and shoved it inside my belt. Then I went over to the lab and walked up to the two guards. They knew me. All this time you’ve got to understand, my body was doing things without my mind telling it to. And I had the funny feeling, sort of on the edge of my mind, that it wasn’t right to be building the Beatty One. It was nasty, somehow. Dirty. And all my friends, all the people sleeping in the area, they were enemies and not … very bright. You know what I mean?”
    Sachson stared at him. “I think that needs a little more explanation.”
    Kornal scratched his head. “Look. Suppose you went into an African village at night, General. They were all asleep. You would feel a lot smarter and superior to those savages, General, and yet you might be a little afraid of them waking up and ganging up on you. It was like that. I pulled out the pipe and hit the two guards, backhand and forehand. They dropped and I broke the door down. I went in, and it was like I’d never been there before. The equipment, the panels and all, they weren’t familiar to me. They were dirty, like the Beatty One, and I had to smash them. I had ten minutes in there before they got me. As soon as they grabbed me, I was myself again. I did a good job in there. Adamson cried when he saw it. Cried like a baby. The thing that took over my mind and body … it was a kind of devil, I guess.”
    Bard intercepted Sharan’s quick, startled look.
    “The devils had you, eh?” Sachson said, his eyebrows arching up toward his hairline in mock astonishment.
    “Something had me. Something walked in and took over. There wasn’t a single damn thing I could do about it, either. After I was myself again, I tried to kill myself. But I couldn’t do it.”
    Sachson turned to Colonel Powys. “What’s S.O.P., on such cases, Roger.”
    Powys had a rusty, rumbling voice. “We can’t bring it to trial, General, if the suspect knows too much about any top secret project still under process of