Asimov's SF, April-May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “More and more mysterious,” Rebecca said. “Okay. You're the doctor.”

  Edith closed her eyes when Rebecca left to pack. The doctor, she thought bitterly. For all the good she was doing, she might as well be a strip dancer. Do no harm, she thought even more bitterly. Right. She was missing something, she knew, maybe a small detail that could have helped, maybe something big and significant. Something kept eluding her. Or her preoccupation with her research was blinding her to that something.

  After Rebecca reentered the psych building that day, Keith was galvanized into frantic activity. He raced back to the condo and threw clothes into his backpack, added extra sweatshirts, piled rain gear on a chair to be tossed into the back seat. He moved his mother's car from the covered parking space and put his Honda there. Hers was a Prius. She was doing her part, she had said when she bought it. He made coffee and filled a Thermos and put the cabin key in his pocket. He had to go shopping, ice for a small cooler, munchies, cheese, cream, fruit, juice. She didn't drink carbonated drinks or beer. She had said ruefully that they burned her tongue.

  At a quarter after four he pulled into the parking lot, a ten minute walk from the psych building. That day he made it in five minutes, then had to wait an agonizing twenty minutes for them to appear.

  She had to trust him, Edith thought as they left the apartment and walked around the building to the front entrance. She was placing this girl in his hands for the coming days and she had to trust him. It wasn't the days that worried her, she thought then, but the long nights. Rebecca had to be in bed by ten, and he would no doubt be up for hours after that. She spotted him at the end of the walk, at the edge of the access street that wound in and out around the buildings. The long nights, she thought again. And Rebecca had to be asleep by ten.

  She almost stopped walking with the phrase repeating in her mind. She had to be asleep. My God! she thought then. That could be it. That compulsion, that need could be part of the amnesia syndrome! Not simple fatigue, not a lifelong habit, part of the syndrome.

  When they drew near Keith, she said to Rebecca, “Wait here a second, will you? Last minute instructions to your escort.”

  She went on ahead when Rebecca stopped. “Her things are in here,” she told Keith, handing him the briefcase. “One thing I want you to try. Don't let her go to sleep if you can help it. Keep her awake as many hours past ten as you can.”

  “No Doz pills,” he said promptly. “Lots of coffee.”

  If she had thought of it earlier, she could have provided something, but it was too late. No Doz should work. She motioned for Rebecca to join them. “Your escort is ready and waiting. And since you two have already met, no introductions are needed, I think. I'll see you in a couple of days. Good luck!”

  “You never even mentioned that you were working for Dr. Dreisser,” Rebecca said accusingly.

  “What would your reaction have been if I'd said I intended to take you away for a day or two?”

  “You would have seen a new speed record set.”

  They were talking animatedly as they walked away, two young people, students to all appearances. He carried a briefcase, nothing remarkable, nothing memorable if anyone even noticed them. Edith returned to the psych building.

  * * * *

  “The plan,” Keith said on the way to the car, “is first to go to a supermarket. I want to buy some foam cups for later. Hot coffee. And then Starbucks to fill a Thermos. I put coffee in it, but Mother's coffee is pretty bad. I'll dump it and fill it with decent coffee. Okay?”

  “Do you have sugar? And something for breakfast? I hate not having something to eat in the morning until you can get out and find an open restaurant.”

  He groaned. “No sugar, no breakfast. Your department while I find cups.” That would work out great, he thought. Give him a chance to find No Doz while she was busy. He continued with the plan. “After the housekeeping stuff, a restaurant for dinner before we hit the road. Traffic's going to be stop and start for the next couple of hours. Friday night, get out of town night. You know any good restaurants nearby?”

  “A couple,” she said. “Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Moroccan, French, Brazilian...”

  * * * *

  As soon as Angela and Rob left, Edith checked the lab, made sure everything was turned off, locked up, and went home. Eat something, she told herself, nap. That was laughable. She had never been able to nap, and she knew she would not be able to that evening. There was too much on her mind, too much to do. She began to assemble the things she knew she would need. A stack of CDs, a plastic trash bag, big envelope, a padded one to go inside it.... She remembered that she should eat something and scrambled eggs and made toast, then had little appetite for it.

  * * * *

  They chose Italian, and were ready to start driving at a quarter after seven. By nine-thirty they would be at the coast and stop for a short walk, have coffee. If she yawned after that, he would stop and they would have more coffee, and each time hers would be spiked.

  “It was silly not to tell me where we're going,” Rebecca said as soon as he turned onto Highway 26. “Now the question is where on the coast?”

  “Newport. My folks have a cabin there.”

  She sighed. “That's where we always headed when we were kids. Nye Beach, Agate Beach, down past Florence to the dunes to swim in the lakes there. Childhood is wasted on the young. That's what I think. As soon as you get old enough to really appreciate it, you're too busy to just leave everything and take off. I haven't been to the coast since last fall.”

  * * * *

  At eight Edith returned to the psych building. Any colleagues who had been around during the day should be gone by then, and she could not put it off until later because after ten the courtyard by the apartments would be off limits to anyone except the residents. She had no fear of being seen by the cleaning people or a watchman. She often worked into the night.

  She entered the lab and locked the door, then turned on all the computers. Three were dedicated to the research project, the fourth was a general-use machine. She had warned Angela and Rob in the beginning that if she caught anyone surfing the Internet, using email or playing games on a dedicated computer, she would turn that person inside out. Suddenly she recalled something her grandfather had said when she was very small, no doubt doing something forbidden. “You do that again and I'll jerk a knot in your tail,” he had rumbled. She smiled at the memory that had been locked away for more than forty years.

  She examined the files then, starting with Rob's computer that held all the data from the first trial, labeled Map 1, up to and including Rebecca's, number 5. Nothing else was on the computer, and she started copying the whole disk to CDs. She repeated this with Angela's machine, started copying, and went on to the third one that held all the images and sounds she had assembled to put together the final tapes she used. That one would take longer, she suspected, and started the process. The general-use machine held her interest for a few minutes, then she turned it off again. Nothing there concerned the research.

  Her next step was to gather all the hard copies, reams of printouts, and put them in the trash bag. Leaving the computers copying data, she took the bag to her office and added the printouts on her desk. She scanned pages of her hand-written notes in two notebooks and, using her own computer, copied the scanned material onto disk, then added the notebooks to the trash bag.

  As soon as she was certain she had all the paper copies, she carried the trash bag through the building, out the back door, on to the courtyard where she used all six grills to distribute them, and finally set them on fire. She felt only an icy calm as she watched paper catch fire, curl, and burn.

  “What will Dr. Hardesty do when she finally gets grant money?” Keith asked, driving. They were near enough to the ocean now that he could smell it. It was almost coffee time.

  “Dr. Hardesty,” she said. “Sounds good, doesn't it. Dr. Hardesty will find Lucy's ancestors, and then track her descendants unt
il she finds the first one to leave Africa and head for Europe.” She paused, then added, “Admittedly it might take awhile. Meanwhile, what will Dr. Adams do with his grant money?”

  “Find Atlantis,” he said, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. Fairy tale stuff, he thought. Might as well say he would find a lost civilization on Mars.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “I was hoping you'd be around to dig holes for me to poke into looking for bones. But you'll be deep in the ocean somewhere.”

  “Okay, I'll dig holes.”

  “And I'll come along and tip my hat and say, ‘Dr. Adams, I presume.'”

  Neither one was laughing any longer. In a lower voice then she said, “Do you think you'll hang around when classes start next month?”

  “I'll be around,” he said.

  * * * *

  It took longer to burn paper than she had anticipated. Accidental fires seemed to race along, but a deliberate fire was stubborn; papers burned around the edges, and those inside resisted the flames. She relighted one grill and inspected the others to find more unburned papers. She should have brought something to stir them with, she realized. She looked under the trees until she found a stick and that made it go faster. She had thought at first that she would shred them, but the shredder was old and slow and it didn't cross cut, just spat out strips of paper. She had envisioned long tables with people patiently putting together strips of paper, and decided to go with fire.

  * * * *

  In Cannon Beach they walked down a street or two. There were a lot of people out and about; shops were open, teenagers were singing a school song, marching four abreast.

  “Keith,” she said in a faint voice, “can we go back to the car? I'm really tired. Doesn't seem fair, does it? You do all the driving, and I'm the one who's tired.”

  “No problem. We'll get out of this and I'll fix you Dr. Adams’ rejuvenating, secret formula elixir, guaranteed to make you feel like a kid or your money back.”

  He drove south a short distance, pulled over at a viewpoint turn out, and poured the coffee. He made hers very sweet, with a lot of cream, and he stirred a No Doz tablet into it.

  “Wow!” she said after a sip. “That's really good! Like a cappuccino. Patent that formula, Dr. Adams.”

  “Aim to please, ma'am,” he said. “Just aim to please.”

  * * * *

  The papers were all ashes, the ashes stirred to dead black heaps, and Edith was back inside. The computers had all stopped working with Disk Full messages on the monitor screens. She put in new disks, then went to her office to make a pot of coffee. She labeled the filled disks, put them in sleeves and the sleeves in the padded envelope.

  She began to examine her own computer. Everything she wanted to keep private she moved to a new file she named Keep Out and, finished with that, she copied Keep Out to disk and put it with the others.

  When all the disks were complete, she had seven in the envelope, and finally she sat down at Rob's computer and keyed in new instructions, starting with the first file, Map number 1. She repeated this with the other computers, including her own file Keep Out, then leaned back in her chair and only then realized that tears were on her cheeks, her eyes were burning. Angrily she wiped them with the back of her hand.

  * * * *

  They ate chips and drank juice and Rebecca babbled as Keith drove south on the black, winding mountain road to Newport. When her babble slowed down and she yawned, he stopped and they had coffee, and afterward she babbled again.

  Finally they arrived at the cabin on a high point overlooking the ocean, invisible, but audible in the rhythm of the surf. It was ten minutes after twelve, and she was still wide awake, filled with nervous energy.

  They carried everything inside. “I'll make a fire,” he said. “It's cold in here.” He started to crumple paper. “Did you ever pull an all-nighter?”

  “Are you kidding? We used to get a lot of horror movies and watch them all night, falling asleep on the floor, in chairs, wherever we happened to be. It was different in school. You know, studying for the midterm, or the finals, drinking coffee and then drinking more coffee until dawn.”

  “Let's do it tonight,” he said. “Play Rummy or Scrabble by the fire.”

  “You're on. Bet you go to sleep before I do.”

  “How much? A buck?”

  “Make it interesting. Ten.”

  “You're covered. First the fire.”

  * * * *

  Edith checked the computers one last time, then turned them all off, turned off the lights in the lab, and locked the door. In her office she drew out a sheet of paper from a drawer and wrote a brief note: Dear Cal, please keep the enclosed envelope in a safe place for me. I'll explain next time I see you. It's confidential, of course.

  Done, she thought then, leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed, the envelope addressed to Cal at his home, not the hospital. It was three in the morning. Time to go home and try to get a few hours of sleep. She planned to be back in her office by eight, ready for an uninvited major to drop in.

  * * * *

  They played Rummy and chess, and they played Scrabble. For long intervals they simply talked, about books, movies, music. She talked about her dead father, whom she had adored, and he talked about his father, who couldn't stay in any one place more than a year or two, and rode a Harley Davidson. She exulted when she won a game, groaned when she lost, and hotly defended indefensible words playing Scrabble. “Xerox has too become generic!” she argued.

  Finally she crashed. “I'm going blind,” she said. “Back in a minute.” She walked out of the room, staggering, holding onto furniture on her way, and she didn't return. He found her minutes later stretched out on the bed sound asleep. He took off her shoes and put a blanket over her, then stood gazing at her. He realized he was praying, please remember. When you wake up, please remember.

  Staggering nearly as much as she had done, he left, walked through the living room to a door to a small balcony. Standing on it in a slight drizzle, with pale fog hiding the ocean, he kept hearing the prayer over and over in his mind: Please remember. The deep blackness of night had yielded to predawn, visible fog, he noticed finally. They had stayed up all night.

  He passed up the second bedroom and stretched out on the couch when he returned to the living room. He had to be near enough to hear her when she woke up, be ready to tell her a story, to reassure her that everything was all right, she was all right. His mind was blank. Please remember.

  * * * *

  The call from the major came at eight thirty. He introduced himself, then said, “I'm on official government business, Dr. Dreisser. Please open the door for me.”

  Or I'll huff and I'll puff and kick the door down, she thought, walking through the corridor. When she opened the door, looking past him, she saw the van, not black at all, but silvery blue. Several suited men were standing by it.

  “Dr. Dreisser, I'm Major Thomas Tynsdale, with orders to seize various computers and records, as outlined in this National Security Letter.” Sharp features, nice hair turning a bit gray, a stocky build, he looked like a middle school gym teacher. He handed her the document, motioned his men to come forward, and walked past her toward the lab. She followed without a word.

  The monitors were all on, the programs halted and the screens filled with line after line of numbers. He glanced at Rob's computer, turned away, then abruptly swung around again to stare at the screen.

  “Start it again,” he said in a strained voice.

  She did so, and the lines began to scroll. Just numbers, no symbols, no breaks.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded then.

  “I thought it would be interesting to see if such antiquated machines could solve for pi,” she said.

  He shoved past her to the computer and sent the program to the start of the file, then to the directory, back to the scrolling lines of numbers.

  “It's archived,” he said in a grating voice. “You can't overwrite th
ings and get rid of them.”

  “We don't archive ongoing research. A simple backup is enough. An external hard-drive backup, automatic, of course, in order to keep a running backup of all input.”

  He had turned livid, with a tic jerking in his cheek. “The hard copies,” he snapped. “What did you do with the hard copies?”

  “I burned them.”

  “I don't believe you. You're lying. You're a scientist. You don't destroy ground-breaking research like that.”

  She said nothing, stood with her arms crossed over her breasts, and she thought, Neither do we turn it over to a secret agency to bury.

  “I want to see Ms. Hardesty,” he said after a moment when Edith continued to stand in silence.

  “She isn't here.”

  “Give me the key to her apartment.”

  She turned and walked back to her office, to her purse, and brought out the key, handed it to him. He made no motion to leave.

  “What have you done with her? Where is she?”

  “I don't know. She went to dinner with a man, Keith Adams, and she hasn't come back. I don't know where they are.”

  He told her to wait in her office, and she poured coffee, took it to her desk and sat down to wait. She could almost pity the major, she thought. He knew the research she had done, had been doing, and he knew that whatever agency ended up with Rebecca would not be interested in basic research such as this. Torn between the expediency of his job and his training and inclination toward science, he had made his choice and would have many regrets, she believed.

  They would come back and ask questions, demand answers, probably make threats, take what they wanted and leave. She could wait them out, for now and for an indefinite time to come. When this madness ended, when sanity returned to the world, the work would surface again, be completed, if not by her, then by another, possibly by Rob.

  * * * *

  Keith's sleep was restless, dream filled. Too much caffeine remained in his body for deep sleep. He came wide awake when he heard Rebecca cry out. He stumbled as he rushed to the bedroom. She was sitting upright, staring ahead, deathly pale. She cried out again, “Mother!” She flung her hands over her face, shaking. Fearing the hysteria Edith had talked about, he hesitated only a moment, then ran to the bed and took Rebecca in his arms. She was weeping, shaking.