Free Logan's Run by William F Nolan, George Clayton Johnson Page A

complained Box. “With emotion. With feeling. She is your love, your life.” To the girl, he said, “Mold yourself to his strong body. Look into his eyes.”
    Jess looked into Logan’s eyes.
    He felt the sweet warmth of her, the nearness of her. Breasts pressing him, legs touching him, arms holding him. He felt a slow surge of passion, but more than passion: a rapture, a tenderness, and a wild, sweet sadness he’d never known.
    “Superb!” said Box.
    His metal hand began to buzz. He brought it forward to shiver the ice into blue patterns. He worked furiously, with incredible speed. In a shower of tinkling shards and ice splinters, the two figures began to emerge from the block. Magically, forming, shaping.
    Logan held Jess. This, too, was a house of glass—but how different from the frantic, empty pursuit of sensation in the houses of the city. There was a reality here, a meaning. Forget everything else; forget the twisted man-thing carving the ice; forget the Hell-huddle of convicts; forget Francis and Ballard and the maze and Sanctuary. But let this moment last. Jess…Jess…
    “Done!” piped Box. “Behold!” He stepped back.
    Logan reluctantly released the girl. They faced themselves.
    In stunningly wrought ice figures, shimmering with life, the artist had captured the form, the mood, the emotion of his models. The endless moment was there. Love. Passion. Beauty. All there.
    Logan forced the image from his mind. They had to move, to dress, to make their escape. No time for love. Or passion. Or beauty. No time.
    He turned to reach for his clothing.
    And did not anticipate the ripping blow that snuffed out the world.
    The world was reborn in a voice that said, “Torture is also a fine art and I am its master. Your death, my lady, shall be exquisite.”
    Logan swam up through fog and froth to full awakening.
    He was in an ice cage, behind ice bars. Directly in front of the cage Jess was spread-eagled and helpless, pinned, naked, to a tilted slab. Her body was trembling with chill. Facing her was a steeply inclined slideway. Balanced delicately on the high lip of the slide was a massive ten-ton ice block. An oil flame ate steadily at one end of the great block. Water dripped into white fur.
    With each passing second, as more of the ice melted, the end of the block lightened, tipping the remainder. Already the mass was inching over in a continuous grinding crunch, pulled by the slow force of gravity. When enough of it had turned to water the huge block would tip into the slideway and begin its ponderous rush toward Jess. It would bear down with all of its tonnage, like a giant sledge, and the vulnerable body of the girl would be caught between the ice faces as they smashed together.
    On the polar-covered dais Box sat, his chromed legs folded beneath him. “Beg me,” he crooned “I can still save your life.”
    Jess remained silent, her eyes glazed with fright.
    Logan threw himself at the bars. They held. Embedded in one of them, midway up, he saw the curved darkness of a small fish, frozen there.
    His glance swept the cell. His shirt had been thrown in one corner. Hurriedly he scooped it up and wound it three times around his right hand.
    Box was still urging the girl to beg for her life.
    The block tipped further.
    Logan faced the imperfection in the cell bar, stiffening his fingers into a slight curve, bunching the pad of muscle in the heel of his hand. He assumed the Omnite stance.
    Now.
    He summoned tension into his body, feeling it gather along the backs of his legs; he felt his spine arch as the muscles pumped full of blood. He concentrated on the hand. He was only a hand. He took several deep breaths, let his attention widen to include a spot in space three inches beyond the bar. He would hit that spot.
    He blanked out the cell bar that was between the spot and his hand. It didn’t exist; there was no cell bar. He tensed. Energy sang into the arm that slashed the rigid hand at the spot in the air.
    A