by John Stith
“Vincent, what’s my job here?”
“Your title is Computer Systems Integration Manager.”
A stream angled across his path perhaps fifty meters ahead. As he tried to follow its path upward with his eyes, he stumbled. Totally out of control, he tumbled at least two complete revolutions before slamming into an aspen.
This time the pain in his lower back was excruciating. He didn’t quite black out, but wished he had. His whole body tightened up in agony. He lay there, trying to regain his energy, until he felt clammy as the sweat evaporated. He was aware of a sore spot on the back of his head. Had it been there earlier? There was no way to tell.
“You okay, Vincent?” he asked at last. His throat burned, making it difficult to talk.
“Naturally. But what about you? I can call a doctor.”
Cal considered the possibility, thinking also of the blood on his hands and the way the conversation might turn. “No,” he said finally. “I think I’m okay.”
“You’re in charge.” Vincent said it the way someone else might say, “Go right ahead and kill yourself. See if I care.”
“Can you do things on your own? I mean without directions from me?” Cal wondered what would have happened if he had broken his neck just now.
“In a way. I can’t initiate activities that I don’t know you approve of. But you can give me general directions, or tell me to do something like wake you in eight hours, or call a doctor if you’re unconscious for more than ten minutes.”
“Do I have any outstanding requests like that?”
“You’ve asked me to warn you if I see anyone sneaking up on you.”
“I did?” Cal asked apprehensively. “Did I explain why?”
“Negative.”
Cal sat, looking for a moment at the two overhead continents. His vertigo was still present. Toward the far end of Daedalus’s cylinder, the cumulative refractions over thirty kilometers gave the distant land a faint blue tinge, but it wasn’t the same as a blue sky on Earth.
He painfully pushed himself off the ground and stood until he felt steady enough to continue.
“So I can talk to anyone I want through you?” Cal asked.
“You’ve got it.”
“I don’t even know who I might want to talk to yet, besides a doctor.”
“You might want to call your wife.”
Cal stopped, clearing his throat before he dared to speak. His pulse pounded. “My wife?”
“Sure. She tried to call you last night. Maybe she wants to talk. Or don’t you remember her?”
So he was married. Surprise and worry filtered up from the depths. He couldn’t even remember dating anyone more than maybe a dozen times. He had always been too busy. Had he met her here? He wondered what would have made her special.
“What would I say to her?” he asked unthinkingly.
“That’s not my specialty.”
Fear and curiosity momentarily drove away all unrelated thoughts. Cal wanted to call her right then, but he didn’t. Somehow it was too much like asking a stranger for help. First he had to learn more about himself. Was his marriage one of love, convenience, expedience? He couldn’t imagine the latter two, but then he probably hadn’t imagined waking up on Daedalus and missing a decade of memories.
“How would I call someone?” he asked.
“Tell me the name and whether you want video or voice only.”
“And you’ll let me know if anyone calls?”
“Unless you tell me you don’t want to be disturbed.”
Cal rubbed the back of his neck. “What’s her name?”
“Your wife’s?”
“Yes.”
“Nikki.”
Nikki. No image. For some reason he thought of a young woman he had dated a few times during his freshman year. The memory seemed to be one of the most recent he could summon, but her face had faded into oblivion. Now, all he could recall was her embarrassment when he had found out that, despite her request for help with physics assignments, she’d had a superb high school record, and obviously had as much need for his assistance as their professor did. Had he been so insecure that she needed to overdo her modesty?
He wondered if Nikki was worried. Or uncaring. Was she a friendly roommate, a loving partner, or a bitter, angry person? Again he felt the urge to call, but refrained.
Ahead lay the stream he had seen from farther up the hill. The water’s course curved so it ran parallel to the path.
“The water is pumped up here?” Cal asked.
“Correct. The lakes below feed it. It keeps them from stagnating, and people seem to like the stream.”
The water was totally clear. Beneath the surface, the streambed looked like it was lined with real stones and pebbles, Cal was suddenly aware of how thirsty he was, and awkwardly knelt beside the flowing stream. The water was cool but not chilly.
He couldn’t bend over far enough to drink without pain in his back forcing him to halt, so he stretched out flat on the ground. The water tasted excellent.
“Are you waterproof, Vincent?”
“Down to a hundred meters of water at Earth-normal gravity.”
As he drank, it occurred to him that the water might have a second use. Maybe this would be a good place to wash off the blood and see how much damage his body had sustained. No point walking into Machu Picchu looking the way he did. Twenty meters farther down, the stream ran through the concealment of a couple of large pine trees, so Cal moved on.
The water felt colder when he immersed both arms, so he concentrated on the blood adhering to his hands. The reddish-black flakes came off stubbornly in the cool water. Cal hurried. He took off his trousers and shirt and doused them. The blood clung to the thin material.
He wrung out the trousers and shirt. The bloodstains were almost as bad as before, so on impulse he crumbled a handful of dirt and sprinkled it on the pants. The dirt reduced the blood’s contrast with the tan fabric. Better to look a little dirty than bloody. He was putting his clothes back on when he realized what else was wrong.
Now that he had washed off his hands and arms, he realized that he had no wounds.
There were numerous minor bruises, but no major breaks in the skin. So whose blood was it?
“Vincent?”
“Here.”
“Do you know anything about the blood on my hands?”
“Not much. Last night at twenty-three fifteen, you turned me on and asked me to erase all my records of your recent activities. Your sleeve was rolled down over me, so I couldn’t see, but it sounded like you were dragging something heavy along the floor. Like a body.”
“Did I say why, or say anything else?” Cal’s head began to ache again.
“You didn’t explain. But you did keep repeating a phrase. You kept saying, ‘What have I done to you?’”
CHAPTER 2
Hotel
“‘What have I done to you?’ I said that?” Cal asked, dazed.
“Several times,” said Vincent. “And I didn’t think you were practicing voice lessons.”
Cal’s gaze focused on the pine tree in front of him, as though by looking at a relatively normal object, he could block out all the abnormalities. Or was it abnormal for him to be dragging bloody bodies around at midnight? Maybe that was why he felt the need to hurry. He shivered.
“What did I do then, Vincent?” he asked at last.
“I don’t know. You turned me off. But even if you had left me on, I wouldn’t have saved much information unless you were talking to me.”
Cal walked down the hill toward Machu Picchu. The pain was tolerable, and he felt slightly better physically. The light breeze persisted. What he had said to Vincent made it seem that he had hurt someone badly, perhaps deliberately, and then felt remorse. He forced the thoughts of a bloody body from his mind. There had to be more to the story. He couldn’t have killed anyone.
“Too much is happening,” he said. “I’ve known my name for less than thirty minutes. And I don�
�t even know where I live. I do live here, don’t I?”
“For sure. You can even see it from here.”
Cal took another glance at the two overhead continents before the vertigo resumed. “I suppose that’s humor. Right, Vincent?”
“Very good. Maybe you are recovering. Look down at the land that runs from Machu Picchu all the way to the other end. There are three villages. One in the center, two nearer to the ends. You live in the center village, Greenwich, just beyond the lake. Want a closer look?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I can operate as a telescope just as easily as a mirror. Hold me at a convenient position and watch.”
Cal stopped walking and did so. A color image of the center village came up on the screen and began to zoom.
“Say when,” said Vincent.
The picture kept growing, far beyond what Cal thought was possible. Surprised, he said, “Enough.”
In the screen were fewer than a dozen earth-sheltered houses, many with large windows, sprawled in the midst of an area almost as lush with pine trees, grass, and low shrubs as his current location. Massive windows consumed almost all the exposed area in several of the houses. Grass grew on the roofs of some of the houses, and a few had rock facing.
“That’s remarkable. How is it that this image is so steady?” he asked.
“The view I’m receiving is approximately ten times the area I’m showing you. As long as you don’t move so much that I lose the primary view, I can dynamically pick the right portion so you see a steady display. If you move too much, I just repeat frames until you swing back.”
What Cal found even more surprising than the view was the touch of pride in Vincent’s voice. As he watched the screen, a young blonde girl, perhaps ten years old, pedaled her bicycle into view. She leaned hard and followed a sharp bend in the path, disappearing momentarily behind a large evergreen. Following behind her, running hard, was a small terrier. Apparently there were no roads, just meandering trails.
“Thanks very much,” Cal said after just a moment longer. He had experienced a puzzling, disquieting sensation as he watched the girl, and could no longer look. Did he possess an extremely powerful aversion to voyeurism? Maybe it had something to do with Carla. He realized that he had not thought about his sister until now. Had he and Carla had another fight—maybe one more serious than all their petty squabbles as kids when both of them had wanted to be the leader? No. That didn’t seem right. He and Carla had become good friends once they were out on their own, competing with classmates rather than each other. At least he remembered more than he had before. He wished the triggers to more information would speed up.
“Care to see anything else?” Vincent asked.
“That’s fine for now. What about transient lodging in Machu Picchu?” he asked, picking his steps carefully, convinced that he couldn’t make it home, and nervous about what he would find there. Would there be a policeman waiting for him?
“Plenty there, Kemo Sabe.”
“Vincent, where do you get your choice of words?”
“From your list. You gave me a list of a hundred books to read as part of my initialization. Most of them were novels, but I especially liked Five Centuries of Slang and Idiomatic Expressions.”
“Do I always understand you?”
“Mostly. If it’s critical, I try to confine myself to easily understood phrases. With a lot of the slang, the sound it makes tells you more than the word itself. But if you insist, I could limit my speech to current usage and slang no older than a year.” Vincent’s voice implied reluctance even to suggest such a limitation was possible.
“No,” he said. “Use whatever you like for now. If I have too much trouble, we can worry about it later.”
“Thanks, pal.”
“Don’t mention it. Wait a minute—do you take expressions like that literally?”
“Only when it’s to my benefit.”
Cal grinned despite his exhaustion. Ahead, a solitary hiker climbed the path Cal was on. As the figure came closer, Cal could see that it was a woman. He experienced conflicting feelings, telling himself simultaneously that she was attractive and that she was too old for him. But he looked again and realized she was probably in her thirties, so part of his subconscious message was clearly wrong.
“You’re up early,” she said, once the distance had narrowed. Her voice was unstrained, as though she were used to a brisk morning jaunt. The fringes of her blonde hair were bright in the sunshine.
Cal said nothing at first, unsure whether he was supposed to know her. “It gave me a chance to see the sunrise,” he said neutrally.
“I should do that sometime—are you okay? You look like you had a bad fall.” The woman stopped.
“I’m fine. Really.” Cal decided he didn’t know her.
“I don’t believe you, you know.” She stood there smiling, waiting. Her shirt and shorts, made of thin material like that of Cal’s clothes, were snug and flattering. A small pack hung from a narrow belt at her waist.
Cal stared at her eyes. She seemed genuinely interested in helping, but he couldn’t accept it. Not without knowing more about what was going on. He smiled wryly at the paradox. “I’ll be all right. I took a spill, but everything’s under control now. Thanks for the concern.”
“Wounded your pride, too?” she asked. But without waiting for a reply, she added, “Okay. I’m going on up. Last chance.”
“I really do appreciate your offer. But I can get down fine. Thanks.”
“Okay.” She gave him a broad grin, as if to say she wasn’t offended, and left.
“One question,” Cal called before she got too far away.
“Okay.”
“Do you come up here every morning?”
“Every one. Why?”
“Just curious.”
She grinned again and turned away. Cal watched her until she passed behind a cluster of aspens. The sway of her hips awakened feelings that had been dormant earlier in the day, and he wondered again about his relationship with his wife.
He turned back toward the outskirts of Machu Picchu. The urge to hurry was stronger now, still unaccompanied by any idea of why.
He soon found himself on what had to be the grassy roof of one of the uppermost buildings at the edge of the city. Below him, the rest of Machu Picchu was an enormous, irregular, green-carpeted staircase. There came a distant sound like a door slamming shut, but otherwise the city lay quiet.
The buildings were mostly long, narrow structures set horizontally into the side of the hill, such that each roof was covered by grass and shrubs. Each, in turn, provided a terrace and a pleasant view to the next building up the slope. Occasional breaks between buildings on the same level formed passageways for people to travel up and down the hill. Bicycle racks were plentiful, but there were hardly any people out on the streets.
“Where are the nearest transient accommodations?” Cal asked.
“Here’s a map. We’re always the blinking green box. I’ll show the hotel you want in red.”
Cal glanced briefly at the map on Vincent’s screen. “I’m too tired even to do that. How about if you just give me directions?”
“Okay, Igor. Face left. Now walk this way.”
“Vincent, why did I buy a smart-ass?”
“Smart ass? You said you wanted me this way because you worked with computers all day. You were bored with most of them,” said Vincent. “Smart-ass?”
Cal followed Vincent’s directions. Only one of the shops he passed, evidently a bar, showed signs of activity. Fortunately, the hotel was not far from where he had come into town.
“Here we are, killer,” Vincent announced a few minutes later.
“Ah, Vincent, could you take that word off your list for the time being?”
“Cert.”
The hotel fit into the general format of the buildings Cal had already passed, except it was longer than most of the stores, and a few rock benches sat on the grass in front. L
ike many of the stores, the hotel’s facing looked like smooth granite. Bordering the lip of grassy roof that he stood on was a short rock wall.
From there Cal could see a few more people out on the streets below. Their eyes were shadowed, too distant to see clearly. Was there a policeman looking for him somewhere, wanting to ask him about a dead body or someone badly injured? Cal didn’t know what privacy limits were the norm, but he gathered that if the police were searching for him, Vincent would not tell them where he was.
With a determined stride, a short woman wearing a striped T-shirt and long pants gave him a wide berth as she passed and averted her eyes. Did he look that bad? The woman had also worn a wristcomp, but hers was dark brown rather than the alternating gold and silver of Vincent’s case. Cal hurried inside.
On a panel in the hotel lobby were rows and rows of numbers, each with a light and a touch switch. Cal was surprised that only a scattered few lights were lit.
“The lights indicate occupancy?” he asked.
“Yes. Put your bank stick in the aperture and press your thumb on the white square.”
Cal did so, and a deep voice sounded from the panel. “Welcome to the Machu Picchu Hilton. Rooms are available by the hour, day, or week, in accordance with this schedule.” A panel lit up with a brief table of rates. “If you would like to stay, please press the switch next to the room number you prefer.” A map took over the display space.
Cal pressed the nearest vacancy.
“Thank you very much. Your privacy code is on the screen. Simply type it when you wish access to your room.” Displayed were very tiny letters: A K G T.
“Vincent, can you remember these for me? I’m not sure I even trust myself that far.” He held Vincent close to the screen. Cal assumed that each of the small, circular indentations on the band were video pickups.
“Got it.”
“Have a pleasant stay,” said the deep voice. “A light above your door will blink for five minutes.”
