by John Stith
Cal could see the light from where he stood, and started moving toward it.
“You forgot your bank stick,” the deep voice reminded him.
“Right. Thanks.”
Cal was halfway to his room, moving through a deserted lobby, when he heard sounds from across the room. The throbbing beat had to be coming from the hotel bar. But it was early morning.
Momentarily more curious than tired, Cal walked toward the sound. Maybe the night shift had their entertainment hours shifted also.
He looked into the dim interior of the room that contained the activity. The music was so loud, he almost didn’t hear someone call, “Come on in, honey.”
The bar was packed. There were more people in there than he had seen on his walk. He left. He had taken only a few steps toward his room before a slightly drunk, feminine voice called out more loudly, “What’sa matter, darlin’? Don’cha feel sociable?”
Cal turned to face a tall, dark-haired woman with a hemispherical glass in her hand. Her drink almost spilled as she leaned against the wall, misjudging the distance. She moved closer and put her hand on the back of Cal’s neck.
“Maybe later,” he said, acutely uncomfortable, pushing her hand away.
“Anytime.” She seemed undisturbed.
Confused, he walked to his room. “Nice place you got here,” he said under his breath. He passed a vending machine, and was surprised to see that it offered carrots and celery.
“But you wouldn’t want to live here?” Vincent asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
Under the flashing light, he tapped in his code, and the door slid silently open. A button on the inside wall caused it to close again. Cal didn’t even examine the room. He moved directly to the bed and lay down. “Vincent, would you wake me in two hours? If I don’t get just a little rest, my head is going to explode.”
“Roger wilco.”
The pain in his back flared as he changed positions, but, after a minute or two, Cal felt distinctly better. It occurred to him that he rarely went right to sleep lately, but, even as he wondered where that thought had come from, sleep overtook him.
“Come on,” a voice said. “Wake up.” There was a pause, and the voice prodded again. It took Cal a long moment to reorient himself and realize that Vincent was obeying his last request.
“Okay. Okay. I’m awake.” His head still hurt. He felt better though. “Thanks, Vincent.”
“No sweat, no blood.”
The room was faintly illuminated by a covered window set at an angle between the wall and ceiling.
A small lever moved easily under Cal’s touch, and suddenly the interior of Daedalus was once again in full view. The vertigo he had felt when he looked at the two overhead continents was not so bad as before, perhaps because he was enclosed in a room. Wispy clouds had formed at scattered intervals over all three continents.
He closed off the view and briefly surveyed the darkened room. A door near the entrance could only be the bathroom. Besides the bed, there were just three padded chairs and a desk terminal with a wall screen, which currently showed a Mars landscape. Cal moved to the keyboard and pressed the large onswitch.
Almost simultaneously a feminine voice said, “Hello. I’m ready to serve you. Which choice do you prefer?” and the screen displayed the same message with several computer menu selections, including live video news, text news, entertainment, communications, tourist information, Daedalus library, travel information, and several others.
Cal moved to one of the chairs and lowered himself carefully. “Let’s try text news. Last twenty-four hours. Here on Daedalus. Crime or homicide, whichever has fewer entries. That should do it.”
Two headlines came up on the screen:
1. WIFE KILLS HUSBAND—THEN SELF
2. UNIDENTIFIED BODY DISCOVERED IN DOCK AREA
“Show me number two,” Cal said, his throat suddenly dry.
The requested article replaced the menu on the screen.
04:20 12 APRIL 2156 The body of an unidentified male in his early thirties was discovered in Daedalus dock area C5 after an anonymous early-morning tip alerted police.
No statement has yet been made about whether the death was accidental or deliberate. Authorities believe the severely battered body had been moved after death occurred. Little blood was found at the scene, inconsistent with the wounds to the victim’s head and upper chest.
Undisclosed sources report that several capsules of Vital 22 were confiscated at the scene by police. Officials refuse to say if the restricted cell-regeneration stimulant may have been a motive for murder.
The victim’s identity is expected to be disclosed this morning. Tips go to code D56-122.
Cal turned his head to stare out the window. What had he got himself into? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Without standing, he retrieved the capsules from his pocket.
“Vincent, can you identify these?”
“They look like capsules to me.”
“Thanks. Are you sure that’s all you can deduce?”
“Sorry. You could take them to a pharmatique.”
So what now? Maybe he should turn himself in to the police. Let them determine what had happened last night. He couldn’t be guilty of a crime. Could he? Had the pressures in the last ten years flicked an internal switch? Something else bothered him; he wasn’t even sure that on Daedalus one was innocent until proved guilty.
There were too many questions, too much room for error. The police would probably be just as likely to detain him as help him. He looked back at the wall screen.
“Let’s see live video news, for here on Daedalus.”
Next on the screen was a view of two young women standing in front of what must have been one of the crop fields on Icarus. As they talked about a new technique that might allow five percent more production, Cal realized he was thirsty.
Rising shakily, he moved from the chair, passing through the image of Icarus since the hologram was particularly deep. In the bathroom, he took a long drink. He could have been on Earth, except that next to the toilet was an arrow and a warning sign about Coriolis force.
The same familiar stranger’s image in the mirror stared back at him with bloodshot eyes. He splashed some water on his face and pushed his brown hair closer to where he wanted it. The effort didn’t improve his image much, so he returned to the computer.
The topic had changed. A woman was interviewing a man behind a desk. At first Cal was disinterested, but then he took a closer look at the man.
The man was perhaps in his early forties. His receding hair was space black. Curly chest hair poked over the low shirt-front. He scratched his closely cropped beard.
The man appeared calm. His eyes moved from the reporter to the camera to a screen on his desk. But beneath the calm seemed to lie rigid control. Cal had the impression that if someone came up from behind and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, he would deliberately keep looking in the same direction for a moment before glancing to see whose hand it was.
But the submerged control was not what had drawn Cal’s attention to the man. It was a dim recollection. Could Cal have met him, worked with him, or merely seen him in the media? He pulled, but nothing more would emerge from his memory. Maybe the video was a better idea than the text. Perhaps his memory would respond more readily to pictures than it did to words.
Cal realized that he had been staring, and again he heard the words being spoken.
“…and what do you think you will miss the most when you’re on the Vittoria?” the woman asked. Cal could have seen her face if he were interested, but it would have required him to move from the chair.
“The sun, I suppose. People laugh a little when I say that, but the Vittoria will have almost everything else.” The man’s level voice was as controlled as his facial expressions, but his speech prodded no further memories.
“Thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule.” The woman turned to face the center of the audience, and
added, “This has been Michelle Garney, speaking with Russ Tolbor, who is soon to be the commander of the generation-ship Vittoria.” She wore her brown hair pushed back over her ears. She seemed quite attractive in a businesslike manner, but unfamiliar. Would Nikki be as foreign to him?
The hologram collapsed into a blank wall, and a new scene sprang from a pinpoint to form large block letters saying simply:
FORGET-ME-NOW
ERASURE PARLORS
Cal stared at the image, and a shiver passed through him. A moment later another news story began. “Computer, turn the sound off for now.”
“Yes, sir,” the computer said into the silence.
“Vincent?”
“Just a minute. I’m busy.”
“You can tell me some jokes later. Be serious for just a minute, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What are erasure parlors?”
“Memory erasure parlors.”
“Right, but what do they do? Why do they exist?”
“If you want to forget a painful incident, you can go there and pay them to erase your most recent memories. You lose your life savings in a casino, your wife leaves you—you pay your money. ‘Blank’ is a better word than ‘erase,’ because, over the course of the next year or so, the memories eventually come back, slowly enough that you get accustomed to them more gently. That’s the theory, anyway. You want some techified data?”
“Maybe later. Was I in one of those places last night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could my symptoms be caused by a visit to one of them?”
“Possibly, but unlikely. They normally blank a year or so, not over a decade. You’d have to be fairly unsettled to want to lose a decade.”
Cal thought for a moment. “So there are enough customers to justify a place like that. Lots of bad memories?”
“That’s not the only reason. For some people it’s a change of pace, a fad. And it’s a convenient way to prevent the police from forcing a person to provide evidence against himself.”
“You mean someone could commit a crime and temporarily erase the memory?” A second and a third realization hit him. “And the police have the authority to force you to testify against yourself?”
“If lives are at stake.”
“And therefore it might be unwise to complain to the police that I’ve lost my memory.”
“Too true. They might infer things you wish unmentioned.”
Did a murderer think like a murderer if he lost his memories of the crimes? Or even with his memories, what was it like? Maybe he continually rationalized his activities, convincing himself that his victims deserved their fates. Was there perpetual guilt, or did a shifted value system alter the individual’s perceptions? Cal didn’t feel like a murderer, but he wasn’t at all sure that how he felt mattered. Vincent’s comment unsettled him.
“Computer, give me the main menu again.” Cal reexamined the choices. “Let’s give the Daedalus library a try this time. Daedalus itself. Construction.”
Instantly a full-color scale model of Daedalus hung in the air before the screen. Glowing letters and arrows indicated tubeways, structures, power lines, plumbing, homes, businesses, and far more.
“Can you rotate the image the same way Daedalus acts?”
Obediently the cylinder slowly turned on its spin axis. As the three outside mirrors turned with the structure, their images almost reached Cal’s chair. They were each joined to Daedalus on the left end of the cylinder, but they spread wide to catch the sun’s energy.
Outside the left end of the living area cylinder were two disks with the same diameter of the cylinder, aligned on the same axis. The one nearer the cylinder rotated with the same period. The far one, next to the outside parabolic power plant mirror, hung motionless. Cal knew it was for zero-gravity manufacturing and research even without the label over it.
Filaments, tethers to Icarus, connected to the axis and stretched out into space, one from each end of the cylinder.
“Can you mark area C5 in the dock area?”
A light began to flash in the spinning disk. Cal looked more closely and could see concentric floors dividing the disk into an enormous number of levels. C5 lay near the outer edge.
“Can you also mark a point a couple of kilometers up the hill from this hotel?”
The second flashing light served only to indicate how short a journey he had made that morning. Nothing linked the two areas. The tubeways reaching from the “level” valley floors traveled up the hill to the axis, but there was no access to them anywhere near the point where Cal had wakened.
“Stop the rotation please. Fine. Can you indicate where my house is?” Cal wasn’t sure if the room computer had enough data available to make the link, but near the center of one of the continents, a third light began to flash. “Okay. Now highlight the transportation means from here to there.”
Three tubeways passed between the village and the outer shell of Daedalus, apparently running through long grooves set in the rock that formed a cosmic ray barrier for the inhabitants. The center tubeway seemed to come within a kilometer of the light indicating his house.
That was where he must go. Visual triggers were working the best at jogging his memory. He had to know what was happening. Were the police even now trying to locate him? Maybe they already knew where he was since the hotel’s computer was tied in to all the others. When he opened the door to his room, would there be a policeman quietly waiting with a list of questions he might not even comprehend?
Cal turned off the terminal, and the image of Daedalus vanished. The dark gray of the room matched his mood. He rose stiffly from the chair and moved across the floor.
Cal touched the switch to open the door. As it slid far enough for him to see out, he caught a glimpse of someone moving away from the space in front of the doorway.
CHAPTER 3
Home
Cal’s heart raced, and his throat suddenly tightened. The door opened all the way. He stood motionless, afraid to leave. After a long moment, he leaned forward to see that the hall outside his hotel room was almost deserted. No police lay in wait. Down the hall, a man and woman staggered slightly, apparently on their way to their own room. Sheepishly Cal went through the door and tapped the button to close it, indicating that he was finished with the room.
Why was he so startled? Simply because of the trauma of memory loss, or because of submerged guilt? Maybe he had more to feel guilty about than he already feared.
The bar was still noisy, but he didn’t venture near. Outside he squinted in the reflected sunlight for a moment as his eyes adjusted. Vincent confirmed the direction to the tubeway.
There were more people out now. Cal passed pedestrians and bicycle riders as he traveled deeper into the city. He watched faces, seeing mostly serious expressions, but no one who actually seemed familiar. A few people took two looks at him, probably because of the dirt on his clothes, but no one spoke. Casual glances at store windows revealed hand weapons, cinema notices, and home furnishings, none triggering new recollections. The store names were mostly Indian, ranging from Killapata Weapons to Mohican Moccasins.
He passed three more busy bars as he walked, but attracted no more solicitations. Sounds of singing emanated from a church along the way, the church incongruously located next to a drugstore that apparently specialized in recreational drugs. Not everyone he passed wore a wristcomp, but there were several people obviously talking to their own wristcomps.
“How much farther to the tubeway?” he finally asked Vincent. His feet were beginning to hurt.
“Microns. That’s the access ahead.”
Fortunately the tubeway that ran nearest his house was one of the two closest to the hotel. At the base of the building with a tubeway sign, Cal joined a few others as they followed the markers along a granite-lined walkway cut into the hillside. After twenty steps, white indirect lighting took over from the sunshine. After twenty more, he found himself on a fifty-meter
platform extending between two darkened, empty track beds, each sporting a single large repulsion rail. His footsteps echoed off the walls.
Four gaping tunnel mouths, one for each direction on either side of the platform, emitted neither light nor sound. All the surfaces seemed to be cut from granite. One of two illuminated arrows indicated the tunnel that led toward home.
Home. It was a funny word, loaded with connotations. But now it summoned nothing of an earth-sheltered, rock and glass dwelling in the middle of a continent on Daedalus. The few images it did generate were all from Atlanta, of a sister calling to him in his room, warning him that he’d be late. Late. His sense of time was as disjointed as his feeling of home.
With no audible warning, a brightly lit string of yellow cars emerged from the darkness of an uphill tunnel mouth. Cal followed three women into the vehicle and picked a seat away from other passengers. A slight murmur of ventilation air was enough to blanket most of the noise of soft conversations elsewhere. He saw no policemen in the car.
Cal rubbed his finger against a nearby panel that listed almost fifty stops, four of which were labeled “Greenwich.” The car accelerated swiftly. Vincent told him which stop was best, and he requested it.
That done, he looked around the inside of the vehicle and caught the eye of one of the women who had entered when he did. He smiled at her. She returned the smile briefly before turning back to her traveling companions.
Snatches of sentences came to him as he sat. It was hard to make much sense of the fragments, but it seemed to him that the subject of drugs came up frequently.
Eight stops later, Cal exited the car, puzzled by the apparent emphasis of the conversation. Daedalus seemed like a place where that kind of need wouldn’t be so strong. He was the only one to get off, and he watched as the tube train sped silently away. A gently sloping ramp led to the surface.
The grass was thick and knee-deep, as it had appeared in the view from above Machu Picchu. Cal looked back at the city and was surprised to see how far away it was. He had known he was going to the midway point, but the trip had gone so fast, it didn’t seem possible that he had come so far. From here the city was nothing more than vague striations across the hillside.
