The next instant, it seemed, he awakened, all the horror fresh in his mind, the stinging sensation at the nape of his neck changed to a dull throbbing pain. Nadine had led him into this. But she was like the rest, a zombie unable to think for herself.
He shook his head slowly in pained bewilderment. She hadn't been that way the first time he met her. She had been—herself. What could have created this nightmare?
A voice somewhere sounded in deep resonant tones. "So you are awake," it said.
Earl rolled onto his side and searched for the source of the voice. There was no one in view. He was in a room whose walls and ceiling were heavy glass. He looked through the ceiling and saw the familiar maze of steel catwalks inside the dome.
Outside his glass prison a pair of video cameras were trained on him. Their lenses seemed somehow sentient, so that their motionlessness partook of the quality of a fixed stare.
"I've always wanted to meet you," the voice said, and it seemed to come from a small case atop the camera frames.
It was a dream, Earl decided. He had been hit on the head. In his delirium he had conjured up the Brain, activated and intelligent as it was designed to be in theory, possessed of a mind of its own.
"Of course," the voice went on, "I've seen film shots of you. You are the discoverer of the nerve fluid that made me possible."
Earl sat up abruptly. "Who are you? And where—"