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    I Am Legend
    I Am Legend
    I Am Legend
    Ebook199 pages

    I Am Legend

    By Richard Matheson

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Winner of the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award for best vampire novel of the century: the genre-defining classic of horror sci-fi that inspired three films.
     
    The population of the entire world has been obliterated by a pandemic of vampire bacteria. Yet somehow, Robert Neville survived. He must now struggle to make sense of what happened and learn to protect himself against the vampires who hunt him nightly.
     
    As months of scavenging and hiding turn to years marked by depression and alcoholism, Robert spends his days hunting his tormentors and researching the cause of their affliction. But the more he discovers about the vampires around him, the more he sees the unsettling truth of who is—and who is not—a monster.
     
    Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend has been a major influence on horror literature. In 2012, it was named the best vampire novel of the century by the Horror Writers Association and the Bram Stoker Estate. The novel was adapted to film in 1964 as The Last Man on Earth, in 1971 as Omega Man, and in 2007 as I am Legend, starring Will Smith.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 14, 2011
    ISBN9780795315640
    I Am Legend
    Author

    Richard Matheson

    Richard Matheson was one of the great writers of modern science fiction and fantasy. A New York Times bestselling author and screenwriter, his novels included I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man and many others. Stephen King called Matheson 'the author who influenced me the most as a writer'. A Grand Master of Horror and past winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, He also won multiple other awards including the Edgar, the Hugo, the Spur, and the Writer's Guild awards. Richard Matheson passed away in June 2013.

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    Reviews for I Am Legend

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      I read I am Legend decades ago, long before seeing any of the myriad film adaptations of the book, and I was somewhat underwhelmed by the experience. I’ve since seen two film versions of I am Legend and can confirm that in both cases, the film outshines the book.I am Legend is not much more than a novella but it tends to drag in places, (you’ll soon tire of the section featuring like the dog). Ultimately, what kept me reading was not the prose but the premise of a lone man fighting off pseudo-vampires who becomes the nightmare bogeyman of pseudo-vampire children.
    • 4/5
      I've never seen any of the movie adaptations, and went in to this blind. A post-apocalyptic story, a vampire story, and ultimately a sad story of a man all alone in a world completely changed and absolutely terrifying. Really good writing and a haunting ending.
    • 5/5
      Very impressive.
    • 1/5
      Dit is een klassieker in het SF-genre, ik weet het. Maar ik las het als tiener en vond het op dat moment maar niks. 
    • 5/5
      I can't believe I hadn't read this book before! It's tense, claustrophobic, suspenseful and compassionate. A truly original vampire story. I loved it!
    • 4/5
      A somewhat atypical example of 1950s science fiction, or perhaps I'm just too accustomed to the rather pulpy and childish short story genre. Matheson's work is gritty, realistic, cynical and only slightly under-informed. The author paints a picture of post-apocalyptic life that is believable and makes it seem much more contemporary than it really is. The only real annoyance was the author's insistence in using the word 'germs' in place of bacteria. Doubtless this is a nod to his readership of the time but it left me rather perturbed and constantly in search of a red pen.
    • 3/5
      Finished last night. I was a bit disappointed. Maybe because I just had read a fantastic book Swan Song. I understand and appreciate this book was written in the fifties and the first of its kind. that is why I'll give it 3 stars.
    • 5/5
      As perfect a fusion of SF and horror as there's ever been, given one deals in explanation and the effectiveness of the other lies in mystery, that's no mean feat. Stephen King's quoted on the cover of my copy and it's not difficult to discern a direct influence.It's about the effects of solitude, the ineffectiveness of the doctrine of 'rugged individualism' and, in the end, the ineffectiveness of fighting progress, even pursuing that logic to one of the bleakest endings in modern fiction. Matheson's explanation of the vampiric phenomenon is thorough and inspired, to his credit that explanation's well integrated into the story and never detracts from the oppressive atmosphere generated.Short, powerful and terribly beautiful , in SF and horror terms it, justifiably, is legend.
    • 5/5
      To Robert Neville, he seems to be the only person in world who has not turned into a vampire. He spends his nights holed up, while vampires lurk around and attack his house.He spends his days hunting and trying to solve the mysteries surrounding what actually causes people to turn, and what causes their behaviors.Matheson masterfully writes of frustration, helplessness and depression that Robert experiences from being confined, confused and totally alone. Will Smith did a great job of ruining a good story.
    • 5/5
      Superb storytelling through out, in fact it's hard to think of more concise and readable prose in SF. The plot is perfectly pitched between suspense, discovery and sadness, until the end when things come slightly undone. To give any detail would spoil things but let's say everything is, to my mind, wrapped up too neatly. There is also some dark humour in places, but I thought the comment from the reviewer below about the librarians was also very funny!
    • 5/5
      Although I have seen a lot of zombie/vampire movies in my time (including The Omega Man, one of the movies based upon this book, but not the Will Smith film of the same name), this was my first time reading such a book. And I have to say, this was simply incredible. The book delved into all of the typical themes one finds in works of this type, but it examined them in a much more profound and complex way than probably any medium besides literature could. Whether it be the obvious isolation one would inevitably experience when no others survive a plague or the conflicted feelings behind killing things that represent such a direct threat to one's own existence, Matheson has imagined a world of vampires and one man in a realistic way. The inner monologue of Robert Neville is pitch perfect and demonstrates a keen understanding of human emotion. The setting of an apocalyptic city ravaged by disease was also described better than I've seen anywhere else.

      I should mention that I never had much of a feel for science, and this book leans heavily on the scientific explanations for the vampiric phenomenon at times. I was able to more or less understand where the book was going with it, but I was also lost during some of the passages. Who the heck besides a doctor or scientist understands what the lymph system is? But I did appreciate that Matheson explored a supernatural concept and looked at how science could explain it.

      I think what I found most striking here was the ending. It is rare that an author can surprise with the perfect ending while also not having that ending be obvious to the reader. I'm not sure if it's just that I'm dense (certainly a possibility), but I never saw the resolution coming and when it was upon me it was absolutely the best way to end a book. The last paragraphs in particular tied together nicely much of the work's themes, and indeed the story comes "full circle" just as Matheson writes. This was my first Matheson title, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
    • 4/5
      Stunning account of the last man left alive on earth after a virus turns evrybody else into vampires. Chilling and creepy to say the least. The accompanying short stories add to the over all effect of this book.
    • 4/5
      The story suits Matheson's spare style. It keeps it short, maudlin without being overly melancholy, and it keeps Matheson's lesser tendencies in check (trying reading some of his other work, and you'll get the picture). The book itself is now somewhat a legend in its own right, and is the template from which so much has been copied. The story of the creatures of the night - be they vampires, zombies, or anything else nocturnally evil inbetween - is humanely told, with sympathy, and one comes to feel as sorry for those that are lost as for those that have survived.
    • 4/5
      Written in 1954, “I Am Legend” was one of the first books to address the possibility of scientific vampirism. Although more modern readers of horror might roll their eyes (especially as things obvious to the modern reader take our hero by surprise), it all seemed fresh to me simply because I don’t read or watch much horror. While it starts out much like any zombie tale, with the hero defending his property from the seeming undead, it develops in ways that, although possibly clichéd now, are intense.The hero is not the stereotypical Competent Man hero of the 1940s and 50s. He has survived the plague of vampirism through something like dumb luck. He has been successful in fending off his past neighbors and defending his house, but he has become more or less insane in the process. This insanity makes the book almost unpleasant to read, since the main character becomes less and less sympathetic and even less human as time goes on. The descriptions of his inner torment being expressed in violent and self-destructive acts are vivid and intense.The main strength of the book is that sense of teetering on the edge of insanity. There is also a mythic quality to the tale, having the force and the quality to later spawn so many imitative horror stories and movies. The twist at the end that completely redefines both the hero and the entire story in an instant is particularly brilliant, something lacking from many of the works that follow after. Again, it is particularly forceful because it was something completely new at the time. If you enjoy many horror stories, read this one as the progenitor of a form. If, like me, you generally avoid the genre, read this so that you can say that having read some of the best, you don’t have to read too many more. This is a brief tale that undisputedly deserves the “Classic” label.
    • 4/5
      GREAT book, the grandfather of all zombie apocolypse books. Hopefully, Will Smith won't screw it up too bad when the movie comes out.
    • 5/5
      It had been years since I last read this work, and I'm surprised how well it has held up. Very entertaining, whether as a work of horror or of science fiction. Robert Neville flat out works as a man alone surrounded by Matheson's variant of vampires. The vampire novels of today are garbage by comparison.Robert Neville, Ben Cortman, Ruth, so few named characters, yet it worked so well.
    • 5/5
      This is a very effective short novel, told in a direct and simple way. Atmosphere is established quickly and effectively. The cast of characters is small. It hearkens back to a simpler style of storytelling, which so often seem to be lost in today's world of 700+ page long epics, with a cast of characters that reads like a phone book, and multiple convoluted storylines. I read it shortly after reading John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, another classic short novel very much in the same style. One thing I really liked about this book was that the protagonist, when faced with a horrible post-apocalyptic doom, turns to deductive reasoning, ingenuity, and thoughtful scientific research as he searches for an explanation and perhaps even a solution. Vampire stories are not really my cup of tea, but I would certainly recommend this one to anyone.
    • 5/5
      This is truly a masterpiece and a classic story of vampires. It is a unique take on the creatures of legend and redefines our concept of "monster". Brilliant!
    • 4/5
      Flawed but worth reading for its dark vision and its re-imagining of the vampire legend, translated into mid-20th century society as a global plague. The characterization of the central figure, Robert Neville, is often weak and inconsistent; the alcohol-fueled bouts of doubt and self-loathing in particular feel thin and contrived, and Neville's experimentation and dabbling with scientific method is depicted in what now, from the perspective of the early 21st century, seems an almost grade-school level of laughable unsophistication. All that aside, however, the novel does manage to create a good deal of suspense and horror, and rewards the reader with a satisfying and thought-provoking ending.
    • 5/5
      Spoilers ahead, so to summarise: a good book about Zombie-like Vampires or Vampire-like Zombies and the last human's fight for survival.People describe this book as a Vampire book. I don't know that that's entirely accurate. It's last man, massively overrun by hordes of undead tale reads closer to Zombie tales than the Vampire novel's classic solitary, or small group within humanity's vast ocean. Robert Neville's loneliness leads to his own great cycles of hope and despair. Hope with the companion of a dog, despair at the loss. Hope of finding the "cure", despair of finding his distrust of Ruth to be justified. All this leads naturally to his understanding and acceptance of his place as a legend - the last vampire hunter as the new society takes over. All is there. All is goodSome have criticised the "scientific" explanations Neville finds whilst others point out the level of expertise he quickly gathers. OK, some science may be shaky when viewed under today's light, the story of his immunity is suddenly dumped on us and seems implausible. But the fact that he is an amateur, he is relying on public library text books and "civilian" resources means that he isn't going to grasp the full effects of the science he finds. It means he is grasping at theories which make most sense given his data and understanding. He has to work on guesswork. That this comes through in some of the psuedo-science helps to reinforce the character and the story.
    • 4/5
      I am absolutely spineless, but I AM LEGEND is beautiful and very, very grim. It also date-rapes biology, but who doesn't?
    • 4/5
      This story was less action packed than I expected. Given it was made into a Will Smith movie (which I haven't seen) I was expecting gunfights all over the place. I Am Legend does not deliver that though, and is probably the better for it. Instead we get a much more thoughtful and considered novel about vampires. The scientific approach is interesting (if hokey) and Matheson's focus on the bad habits and solitude of his "hero" is the best thing about the book - it makes for a much smarter vampire / post-apocalyptic novel than most.It's true that some flashbacks, even in this short book, do feel a little long-winded, like they're slowing down the rapid pace of the book. However that's the only criticism I have of what is otherwise a very solid novel. True, it's a shame there aren't more characters to get involved with but then that would defeat the point of a "last human alive" style story, wouldn't it? I Am Legend doesn't outstay its welcome and is pretty good just as it is. A classic of its genre that doesn't disappoint, even if it doesn't amaze either.
    • 3/5
      I found I Am Legend much more enjoyable than Hell House, possibly because the main character spends the majority of the book in solitude, so besides some yearnings there really isn't the opportunity to get into the kind of raunch and gratuitous perversion that made Hell House so hard to get through. And since the main (male) character is alone most of the time, Matheson doesn't have quite the opportunity to write horrible female characters (he gets it in towards the end with a handful of cliches and stereotypes, but since it's not pervasive I couldn't work up the same irritation that came so easy to me reading Hell House :P). It's definitely a book I would recommend to anyone with an interest in horror or specifically vampires in fiction, as the novel has a very interesting take on the myth. I wouldn't recommend this for characterization or plot; from what I've observed, Matheson works entirely in bland stock characters who go nowhere in terms of personal growth or storyline. It's fine for a novel like I Am Legend, though, where the premise is the entire point, and the characters expounding on it are mere props. In the case of this book, unlike Hell House, the premise was more than enough to carry me through happily to the end.
    • 4/5
      Read it in one sitting. Its easy to see why King said this book had influenced his writing. One man struggling with the unbearable idea of being alone, who's actions, we discover at the books end, explain how the outsider becomes feared.You'll laugh, cry and rage alongside Robert Neville. Non SF/horror fans will find it a good read and introduction to these most misunderstood genres.
    • 4/5
      A gruelling journey into a post-apocalyptic world. Want to know the mental tortures of being the last human alive? Matheson does his best to explore them, but the pay-off is worth the trip.
    • 4/5
      Vampire and horror stories are generally not my kind of thing but this novella grew on me. As a matter of fact, this dystopian fantasy is more about a man trying to survive alone, mourning the loss of his family and wondering what keeps him from committing suicide.Robertson Dean does a great job with the narration.
    • 5/5
      The grandaddy of all apocalyptic disaster novels. Shame the movie it spawned (Omega Man) was pretty naff, despite starring Charlton Heston!
    • 4/5
      Published by SF Masterworks which is a hint, originally published in 1954.A vampire story and science fiction and damn good.Robert Neville is the last human left alive but he is definitely not alone.
    • 5/5
      A phenomenal and stunning work that serves as a marked departure in the sci-fi genre. A must read for anyone with a passing interest in the evolution of zombie fiction and a remarkable work of literature that deserves to be placed up there with the greatest works of our time.
    • 4/5
      I'm not sure if this book warrants a review, or even classes as a novel - at just over 150 pages, it's more like a short story - but I thought it was cleverly written. From my impression of the 2007 film with Will Smith, I would never have guessed the premise, but I Am Legend is a pithy, dramatic twist on the usual vampire story, merging Stephen King-esque suburban horror with a sci-fi flavour. 'That was what the situation had been. Something black and of the night had come crawling out of the Middle Ages. Something with no framework or credulity, something that had been consigned, fact and figure, to the pages of imaginative literature. Vampires were passe, Summers' idylls or Stoker's melodramatics or a brief inclusion in the Britannica or grist for the pulp writer's mill or raw material for the B-film factories. A tenuous legend passed from century to century.'Robert Neville is the survivor of a devastating plague, trapped in his own house against a mutant breed of vampires. The claustrophobia and futility of Neville's life is scary enough, but the form of his enemy is terrifying. Matheson employs most of the typical vampire devices inspired by Stoker's Dracula, but also turns the mythology on its head when Neville discovers the cause of the mutation. The reversal of fate suffered by Neville is unavoidable but satisfying, in a way, both for the human protagonist and the reader.

    Book preview

    I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

    CHAPTER ONE

    On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.

    If he had been more analytical, he might have calculated the approximate time of their arrival; but he still used the lifetime habit of judging nightfall by the sky, and on cloudy days that method didn’t work. That was why he chose to stay near the house on those days.

    He walked around the house in the dull gray of afternoon, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, trailing threadlike smoke over his shoulder. He checked each window to see if any of the boards had been loosened. After violent attacks, the planks were often split or partially pried off, and he had to replace them completely; a job he hated. Today only one plank was loose. Isn’t that amazing? he thought.

    In the back yard he checked the hothouse and the water tank. Sometimes the structure around the tank might be weakened or its rain catchers bent or broken off. Sometimes they would lob rocks over the high fence around the hothouse, and occasionally they would tear through the overhead net and he’d have to replace panes.

    Both the tank and the hothouse were undamaged today.

    He went to the house for a hammer and nails. As he pushed open the front door, he looked at the distorted reflection of himself in the cracked mirror he’d fastened to the door a month ago. In a few days, jagged pieces of the silver-backed glass would start to fall off. Let ’em fall, he thought. It was the last damned mirror he’d put there; it wasn’t worth it. He’d put garlic there instead. Garlic always worked.

    He passed slowly through the dim silence of the living room, turned left into the small hallway, and left again into his bedroom.

    Once the room had been warmly decorated, but that was in another time. Now it was a room entirely functional, and since Neville’s bed and bureau took up so little space, he had converted one side of the room into a shop.

    A long bench covered almost an entire wall, on its hardwood top a heavy band saw, a wood lathe, an emery wheel, and a vise. Above it, on the wall, were haphazard racks of the tools that Robert Neville used.

    He took a hammer from the bench and picked out a few nails from one of the disordered bins. Then he went back outside and nailed the plank fast to the shutter. The unused nails he threw into the rubble next door.

    For a while he stood on the front lawn looking up and down the silent length of Cimarron Street. He was a tall man, thirty-six, born of English-German stock, his features undistinguished except for the long, determined mouth and the bright blue of his eyes, which moved now over the charred ruins of the houses on each side of his. He’d burned them down to prevent them from jumping on his roof from the adjacent ones.

    After a few minutes he took a long, slow breath and went back into the house. He tossed the hammer on the living-room couch, then lit another cigarette and had his midmorning drink.

    Later he forced himself into the kitchen to grind up the five-day accumulation of garbage in the sink. He knew he should burn up the paper plates and utensils too, and dust the furniture and wash out the sinks and the bathtub and toilet, and change the sheets and pillowcase on his bed; but he didn’t feel like it.

    For he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to him.

    ***

    It was almost noon. Robert Neville was in his hothouse collecting a basketful of garlic.

    In the beginning it had made him sick to smell garlic in such quantity; his stomach had been in a state of constant turmoil. Now the smell was in his house and in his clothes, and sometimes he thought it was even in his flesh. He hardly noticed it at all.

    When he had enough bulbs, he went back to the house and dumped them on the drainboard of the sink. As he flicked the wall switch, the light flickered, then flared into normal brilliance. A disgusted hiss passed his clenched teeth. The generator was at it again. He’d have to get out that damned manual again and check the wiring. And, if it were too much trouble to repair, he’d have to install a new generator.

    Angrily he jerked a high-legged stool to the sink, got a knife, and sat down with an exhausted grunt.

    First, he separated the bulbs into the small, sickle-shaped cloves. Then he cut each pink, leathery clove in half, exposing the fleshy center buds. The air thickened with the musky, pungent odor. When it got too oppressive, he snapped on the air-conditioning unit and suction drew away the worst of it.

    Now he reached over and took an icepick from its wall rack. He punched holes in each clove half, then strung them all together with wire until he had about twenty-five necklaces.

    In the beginning he had hung these necklaces over the windows. But from a distance they’d thrown rocks until he’d been forced to cover the broken panes with plywood scraps. Finally one day he’d torn off the plywood and nailed up even rows of planks instead. It had made the house a gloomy sepulcher, but it was better than having rocks come flying into his rooms in a shower of splintered glass. And, once he had installed the three air-conditioning units, it wasn’t too bad. A man could get used to anything if he had to.

    When he was finished stringing the garlic cloves, he went outside and nailed them over the window boarding, taking down the old strings, which had lost most of their potent smell.

    He had to go through this process twice a week. Until he found something better, it was his first line of defense.

    Defense? he often thought. For what?

    All afternoon he made stakes.

    He lathed them out of thick doweling, band-sawed into nine-inch lengths. These he held against the whirling emery stone until they were as sharp as daggers.

    It was tiresome, monotonous work, and it filled the air with hot-smelling wood dust that settled in his pores and got into his lungs and made him cough.

    Yet he never seemed to get ahead. No matter how many stakes he made, they were gone in no time at all. Doweling was getting harder to find, too. Eventually he’d have to lathe down rectangular lengths of wood. Won’t that be fun? he thought irritably.

    It was all very depressing and it made him resolve to find a better method of disposal. But how could he find it when they never gave him a chance to slow down and think?

    As he lathed, he listened to records over the loudspeaker he’d set up in the bedroom—Beethoven’s Third, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies. He was glad he’d learned early in life, from his mother, to appreciate this kind of music. It helped to fill the terrible void of hours.

    From four o’clock on, his gaze kept shifting to the clock on the wall. He worked in silence, lips pressed into a hard line, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his eyes staring at the bit as it gnawed away the wood and sent floury dust filtering down to the floor.

    Four-fifteen. Four-thirty. It was a quarter to five.

    In another hour they’d be at the house again, the filthy bastards. As soon as the light was gone.

    ***

    He stood before the giant freezer, selecting his supper. His jaded eyes moved over the stacks of meats down to the frozen vegetables, down to the breads and pastries, the fruits and ice cream.

    He picked out two lamb chops, string beans, and a small box of orange sherbet. He picked the boxes from the freezer and pushed shut the door with his elbow.

    Next he moved over to the uneven stacks of cans piled to the ceiling. He took down a can of tomato juice, then left the room that had once belonged to Kathy and now belonged to his stomach.

    He moved slowly across the living room, looking at the mural that covered the back wall. It showed a cliff edge, sheering off to green-blue ocean that surged and broke over black rocks. Far up in the clear blue sky, white sea gulls floated on the wind, and over on the right a gnarled tree hung over the precipice, its dark branches etched against the sky.

    Neville walked into the kitchen and dumped the groceries on the table, his eyes moving to the clock. Twenty minutes to six. Soon now.

    He poured a little water into a small pan and clanked it down on a stove burner. Next he thawed out the chops and put them under the broiler. By this time the water was boiling and he dropped in the frozen string beans and covered them, thinking that it was probably the electric stove that was milking the generator.

    At the table he sliced himself two pieces of bread and poured himself a glass of tomato juice. He sat down and looked at the red second hand as it swept slowly around the clock face. The bastards ought to be here soon.

    After he’d finished his tomato juice, he walked to the front door and went out onto the porch. He stepped off onto the lawn and walked down to the sidewalk.

    The sky was darkening and it was getting chilly. He looked up and down Cimarron Street, the cool breeze ruffling his blond hair. That’s what was wrong with these cloudy days; you never knew when they were coming.

    Oh, well, at least they were better than those damned dust storms. With a shrug, he moved back across the lawn and into the house, locking and bolting the door behind him, sliding the thick bar into place. Then he went back into the kitchen, turned his chops, and switched off the heat under the string beans.

    He was putting the food on his plate when he stopped and his eyes moved quickly to the clock. Six-twenty-five today. Ben Cortman was shouting.

    Come out, Neville!

    Robert Neville sat down with a sigh and began to eat.

    ***

    He sat in the living room, trying to read. He’d made himself a whisky and soda at his small bar and he held the cold glass as he read a physiology text. From the speaker over the hallway door, the music of Schönberg was playing loudly.

    Not loudly enough, though. He still heard them outside, their murmuring and their walkings about and their cries, their snarling and fighting among themselves. Once in a while a rock or brick thudded off the house. Sometimes a dog barked.

    And they were all there for the same thing.

    Robert Neville closed his eyes a moment and held his lips in a tight line. Then he opened his eyes and lit another cigarette, letting the smoke go deep into his lungs.

    He wished he’d had time to soundproof the house. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t that he had to listen to them. Even after five months, it got on his nerves.

    He never looked at them any more. In the beginning he’d made a peephole in the front window and watched them. But then the women had seen him and had started striking vile postures in order to entice him out of the house. He didn’t want to look at that.

    He put down his book and stared bleakly at the rug, hearing Verklärte Nacht play over the loud-speaker. He knew he could put plugs in his ears to shut off the sound of them, but that would shut off the music too, and he didn’t want to feel that they were forcing him into a shell.

    He closed his eyes again. It was the women who made it so difficult, he thought, the women posing like lewd puppets in the night on the possibility that he’d see them and decide to come out.

    A shudder ran through him. Every night it was the same. He’d be reading and listening to music. Then he’d start to think about soundproofing the house, then he’d think about the women.

    Deep in his body, the knotting heat began again, and he pressed his lips together until they were white. He knew the feeling well and it enraged him that he couldn’t combat it. It grew and grew until he couldn’t sit still any more. Then he’d get up and pace the floor, fists bloodless at his sides. Maybe he’d set up the movie projector or eat something or have too much to drink or turn the music up so loud it hurt his ears. He had to do something when it got really bad.

    He felt the muscles of his abdomen closing in like tightening coils. He picked up the book and tried to read, his lips forming each word slowly and painfully.

    But in a moment the book was on his lap again. He looked at the bookcase across from him. All the knowledge in those books couldn’t put out the fires in him; all the words of centuries couldn’t end the wordless, mindless craving of his flesh.

    The realization made him sick. It was an insult to a man. All right, it was a natural drive, but there was no outlet for it any more. They’d forced celibacy on him; he’d have to live with it. You have a mind, don’t you? he asked himself. Well, use it!

    He reached over and turned the music still louder, then forced himself to read a whole page without pause. He read about blood cells being forced through membranes, about pale lymph carrying the wastes through tubes blocked by lymph nodes, about lymphocytes and phagocytic cells.

    …to empty, in the left shoulder region, near the thorax, into a large vein of the blood circulating system.

    The book shut with a thud.

    Why didn’t they leave him alone? Did they think they could all have him? Were they so stupid they thought that? Why did they keep coming every night? After five months, you’d think they’d give up and try elsewhere.

    He went over to the bar and made himself another drink. As he turned back to his chair he heard stones rattling down across the roof and landing with

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