The Counterfeit Heinlein

by Laurence M. Janifer

  So I phoned him, found out with no surprise that he’d packed up and gone home for the day long before—I’d been in a brown study for some time, and am giving you only the high points of it; I’d spent hours barely conscious of anything except the inside of my head—and left a message asking him, as politely as I could, to call me.

  Then I brewed some coffee, and did some more thinking. I knew how the theft had been accomplished—and I was saving that to show off for the Master, since it led nowhere in particular as regarded other questions. And I did, after all, have one or two indications about at least one member of the pack, and possibly the leader; it seemed unlikely he’d have been comfortable in any other role. I’d had a couple of illuminations—not enough to hang anything on, but enough to think about.

  And when I was finished I gave a deep, deep sigh. I was going to have to talk again to one person I really didn’t want to talk to again. I’d known it would come up, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.

  Well, a job’s a job. And there are worse things in any life. Which, while perfectly true, is surprisingly little comfort.

  I picked up the phone again. I made two calls, and then a third, in which I got a mech over at First Files Building, and left a message asking for an appointment, at eleven the next morning (I wanted to be rested for this one, if possible) with Grosvenor Rouse.

  I thought he’d be able to fit me in—and he was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  HE GAVE ME a greeting almost worthy of the Master, when I knocked on his office door and opened it at eleven sharp.

  “Well?”

  “Just a few questions,” I said. “I want to make sure I’ve got everything clear.” I came in and sat down in the chair opposite him, and looked at his massive figure across the cluttered desk.

  “This is taking altogether too much of my time, boy,” he said. “I’m a busy man.” He gestured at the piles of paper.

  “I know,” I said mildly, “and I’m grateful for your time.” I didn’t feel nearly so Schoolboy this time round, but I tried to act as if I did, just to maintain calm. He was used to Schoolboy Knave. “I was wondering about the dig itself. Which one of you actually found the container?”

  “The barrel?” he said. “Dr. Bowyer did. I’m sure of it. She called us all over, and we all got a look right there. An exciting moment, boy, in its way.”

  “It looked the same then as it did when you got it to the lab here?”

  He shook his head, forcefully. “It did not,” he said. “It would not. We sprayed it, naturally. Protective sealant. My God, boy, don’t you know even that much? We spray anything before we remove it—take photos in situ, measure, examine as we can, and then spray before we move it. Always done that way, always.”

  “I see,” I said. “Who did the spraying?”

  “That particular barrel?” he said. “Dr. Shore.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Quite certain,” he said. I looked around the office, and picked up one of the items on the desk. It was a pair of ancient Ray-Ban sunglasses, with one lens missing, in a glassex case. He barked at me:

  “Be careful with that.”

  “Interesting object,” I said. “Where did it come from?”

  “Earth, of course.”

  I nodded. “I see. Was this from the same dig? Or from some previous dig, or a more recent—”

  “Not the same dig,” he said. “Had that for a good many years now. I don’t remember which dig—they’re all the same after a while. Fascinating, boy, don’t mistake me—there’s nothing like going in and seeing it all for the first time in three hundred years—but the details blur together, after a while.”

  “I can see how they might,” I said, and put the case down. I pointed at a cork flute lying on a shelf. “That’s from Alphacent, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” he said. “Ritual object. Not very old—Hell, boy, the world’s only been settled a hundred and eighty years or so—but this was buried with one of their leaders. Small-town leader type, and the town died out—we were able to go in, get a few things. Not disturb the Ancestors unduly, you know—well, that’s a demanding kind of culture they have there.”

  “I know,” I said truthfully. “I’ve been there.”

  He looked at me. “Is this just idle chit-chat, boy?” he said. “I’ve got things to do—”

  “No, Sir, it’s not idle,” I said. “I was admiring your memory. I’ve noticed it before.”

  He frowned. “My memory?”

  “Yes, Sir,” I said. “The way you can just reel off every detail of a dig like that.”

  “They blur together, boy,” he said. “I’ve told you that. There’s nothing wrong with my memory, but when you do a lot of digs, they seem to blur together in your mind. Perfectly natural.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said. “I’ve spoken to Dr. Shore, and Dean Rell—Dr. Rell, I suppose—and Dr. Bowyer, and they’re all a bit vague about details of the dig. Even about details of the unsealing back here.”

  “Unsealing’s a tech job,” he said. “We don’t have much to do with it. We like to see the objects as soon as we can, boy, but there’s no reason to remember small details. None at all.”

  I nodded at him. “Perfectly natural. And even on a dig where some object was particularly important to you—those sunglasses, for instance—a lot of the details would naturally blur into the details of other digs. I’m sure that would be true of anybody.”

  “It would,” he said.

  “But,” I said, “with this one particular dig—the one I’ve been asking you about—you do remember every detail, sharp and clear. I noticed it last time we talked, Sir. I noticed it even more today—it’s so different from the other digs.”

  There was a little pause. Not a long one, but Rouse was a more practiced blusterer than he was a liar. Nobody’s good at every trade. “Well, you asked me about it,” he said. “I had a chance to think. To consult my memory.”

  “You didn’t have a chance to think the other day,” I said. “But you had no trouble with the details. You even remembered the names of the techs who had unsealed the barrel.”

  “I looked for the work assignments—”

  “No, Sir,” I said. “You remembered all three names, at once, and gave them to me. You even remembered that it was Drang Mathias’ first assignment—which didn’t matter one way or the other, but you had the fact at your fingertips. No hesitation, not even a second or so to think, Sir. You gave me the names when I asked about them.”

  “I’m sure I—”

  “You checked work assignments after that,” I said. “To see where they’d be just now. But you checked assignments for names you’d already given me.”

  Another pause. “I may have,” he said. “Memory’s an odd thing, boy. Who’s to say what odd details will stick in your mind? I happened to remember the technicians, that’s all.”

  “And every other detail of the dig,” I said. “Which one of you found the barrel. Even which one of you did the protective spraying—which is certainly the smallest of details. Memory’s an odd thing, Sir. Right. I wonder why it acts that way, for you, about this one dig.”

  He tried for indignation, and missed it. “Boy, what are you implying here?”

  “Well, Sir,”: I said, “I think I know why you remembered this dig. And I think I know why you wanted to be in the room when the barrel was unsealed.”

  “In the room? Who told you I wanted to be in the room? That’s never done, boy. Never. I was not in the room—ask any of the technicians. Just ask them.”

  “I did ask them,” I said. “I asked Dr. Shore, too, Sir. She told me how you wanted her to ask to be in the room—assuming that, if she’d be allowed, you certainly would as well.”

  “What does it matter?” he said. “I wasn’t there. When the barrel was opened—”

  “You were standing just outside,” I said. “You went in very quickly—people do remember that. You were there before the others. Y
ou had the time, and you could have put the manuscript into the pile of objects—probably still inside the barrel. Before the technicians got to removing them. It wouldn’t have been hard to manage.”

  “Could have,” he said. “I didn’t. How can you show otherwise? Don’t be silly, boy.”

  “Well, Sir,” I said, “the manuscript wasn’t in the barrel before it was unsealed. The isotope assay proves that; it was a modern counterfeit. But it was in the material from the barrel right after that. No one else had an opportunity to add it in—except the technicians themselves.”

  “Then one of them must have—”

  I put up a hand, and it stopped him. “Sir, if First Files Building has to put the three technicians, and yourself, through truth tests—lie-detection apparatus—they’ll do it. This is important to them, and the way the government here feels about artifacts they’ll get permission to do it.”

  A long pause. A very long pause.

  “This is an impossible position, boy,” he said. His voice had slowed and softened. “You can see that.”

  “Very difficult,” I said. “Yes, Sir.”

  “I found the manuscript in the dig,” he said. “Wanted to keep it for myself. You know how a thing like that might be. But I had an attack of conscience. Brought it back, shoved it right in with the things from the barrel. Took a second or so, not difficult. As you said. What’s the difference? It all came from the same dig, boy. No harm done, after all.”

  “It couldn’t have happened that way,” I said. “Even in the dry atmosphere of the hole, Sir, the manuscript wouldn’t have been preserved in the same way—probably not well preserved at all. There would have been differences visible to any examination—and there weren’t any.”

  “Well, there weren’t,” he said. “And that’s the way it happened, boy. An attack of conscience.”

  I nodded again. “If you say so, Sir,” I said, and I went away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ten minutes later, I was back on the phone, from my pocket piece—which I had, thank you, remembered to hook into the system before I’d left home. I made two calls, and spoke one word in each—both B’russ’r and the Master knew my voice, and were waiting for the word.

  The word was: “Confirmed.”

  That started the last big set of moves. Now, instead of checking the massive lists of everybody against Ramsay Leake, and everybody against everybody, the two of them could concentrate on checking Gro Rouse against Leake, and against others—a much smaller and simpler job, and one I had some real hopes for.

  One small thing bothered me. just a bit. If Rouse had been the shooter, it seemed he’d have to have been the Hell of a good shot: he’d killed exactly once, when he’d meant to. It is easy to kill by accident, and he hadn’t done it.

  But he hadn’t seemed like a marksman to me. There are types of motion you learn to notice—precision and economy, in a way—that signal the real marksman anywhere, and he hadn’t shown them. My guess would have been an average shot, maybe a hair better than average, but not spectacular.

  Well, Hell, I could be wrong. I finished the calls, and told myself not to worry about it.

  Then I went home, where I could sit down in comfort, and called Detective-Major Gross.

  “What is this?” he said. “Alibis, now? You want me to go out and track down alibis, Knave? Do you think we’re in some sort of 3V crime show, or some such nonsense?”

  “I think something will turn up,” I said. “He’s a careful man, but he’d have had to be in a particular place at a particular time, no way to fudge the time at all—we have Berigot witnesses. If he set up an alibi, it’s going to be a tricksy one, and those are—”

  “Always the easiest to break down, yes,” he said. “I know my trade, you realize.” He sighed. “And where did you get this name, now? Divination? A bolt from the bright blue?”

  I told him. I never had to mention little Robbin Tress; Gro Rouse’s selectively good memory impressed him.

  “It’s just the sort of detail a man does slip on,” he said. “I’ve seen it a thousand times, you know.”

  “Welcome to the thousand-and-first,” I said, and he said:

  “I’ll get on this, Knave. It may turn out to be something.”

  Somehow, I was fairly sure it would.

  * * * *

  AFTER I PUT the phone away, the being I fondly think of as my brain decided it had been cudgeled enough, day after day, and tapped me on the shoulder. It told me to go back and look at an evening I really hadn’t enjoyed much at the time, a conversation between two sf fans about social rules. It was very insistent about this, so I went and dug out the files, which I can sometimes find inside my head, and went over them with some care.

  After a while, I said: “Oh.. Argon.”

  It didn’t have to be him, of course. There was more than one isotope expert on Ravenal, after all, even if there weren’t job lots of them. But the picture was, of course, irresistible. Whoever had actually sat down and written the damn manuscript had to be a Misfit, or someone with equivalent background—and even if there were other underground sf groups on Ravenal (and were there? Would even Mac know, for sure?), what were the chances that a member of one such small minority of people would also be a member of the small minority of isotope experts? The combination looked awfully promising.

  It explained, too—and very simply and beautifully—why the forgery had been of a Heinlein manuscript. The man with the technical knowledge also knew a lot about Heinlein; it was, for him, an obvious choice. I’d been wrong about the forger knowing a technical expert: the forger had been the technical expert. All right, it was easy to be wrong on that sort of guess, and easy to admit being wrong.

  But the basic fact, I realized slowly, was not going to be anything like an easy thing for me to tell the Master about. B’russ’r was fairly familiar with human beings, and he knew that human beings sometimes forgot things, or neglected facts. The Master did not believe this should be so, at least for some human beings.

  Me, for instance.

  Well, it had to be done, didn’t it? I barely gave myself an argument about it, and on the principle of taking the worst first I saved B’russ’r’s call for second.

  I went for the phone again.

  “Who?”

  “Gerald Knave again,” I said. “There’s something else.”

  “Indeed?”

  “There’s an expert on isotopes in the picture,” I said.

  “Some one particular expert?”

  I took a deep breath. “He’s also a Misfit.”

  There was a little silence. “Gerald,” he said. Sadly.

  “Well, I tripped over the fact by accident,” I said. “In the course of not listening to two people talk about something else. Corri Reges and Chandes Washington were arguing about etiquette, and he said something about Geraint Beauthis. That’s what got me interested—and kept me from hearing much of anything else.”

  “Gerald,” he said again. Even more sadly.

  “It seems Chandes Washington was at the library working on something involving isotopes of argon on Kingsley. Long-lived isotopes of argon.”

  “Unusual,” he said. “The data on those isotopes are not yet complete, but do seem convincing. It is perhaps best to keep an open mind on the subject, for the present.” And, after another pause: “Gerald, this is not like you.”

  “It is very like me,” I said. “Now and then I screw up. I never added it in—I just let it lie there, and went on.”

  “Such carelessness,” he said, “is the primary reason I worry about you, Gerald. It can result in injury.”

  Oh, God. “I’ll be all right.”

  “Here in my little home,” he said, “alone in the world as I am, an old blind man, and almost helpless, I hear from you very seldom, Gerald. I am afforded much time for worry. For concern. After all, there is little else with which I may occupy my time. Gerald, it is unkind to increase my worries so.”

  Well, it
’s no use going through the whole of it for you, and if you don’t mind, we’ll just chop it off right there. Not at all pleasant—but what else could I have expected? I had screwed up, and no screw-up comes without consequences.

  I don’t mind saying, though, that it shook me. I had a bomb to toss at the Master, and what with one old blind helpless thing and another, I forgot all about it until almost an hour after he’d said, mournfully: “Finished,” and I’d put the phone away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I DID GET the chance to do it, of course—after a variety of delays. Late the next afternoon, when we finally managed to get together, the four of us. B’russ’r invited us to his tree-house, or nest, or whatever it is the thing should be called. “It will be of interest to note how three people of such varied resources cope with a novel environment,” he said by way of explanation.

  It was the most awkward disguise for an impulse toward hospitality, I think, I’ve ever heard—but I let it pass, of course. Personal emotions—and hospitality is a personal emotion—are still novelties for the Berigot (that being perhaps the primary consequence of information upload), and it’s going to take some time before they have any real idea how to handle them.

  If they do, of course, they’ll be one long step ahead of human beings, because God knows we don’t.

  B’russ’r had provided ladders for us—there’s a rental company, Success Ltd., that does very well for itself, with offices near each Berigot colony—and by the time I got there the Master and Robbin had already gone up. I don’t suppose Robbin had any difficulty with the ladders—she’d visited Berigot before, I knew—and I am damn sure blind old Master Higsbee didn’t. I clambered up myself, and stepped onto the platform, about forty feet in the air.