The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack

by Robert Silverberg

“Thank you.”

  “Not at all.” She whisked herself away, the soul of efficiency.

  Sherwood scanned the paragraphs. They presented in digestible brevity the memorial dates of the years. The first event of note after May 15 was a fire in the La Salle Hotel in Chicago on June 5, in which sixty-one persons were killed. He read on down the column, taking some satisfaction in the war criminals trial in which twenty-two Nazis were found guilty, reading of the coal mine strike, the resultant Taft-Hartley Act the next year, the assassination of Gandhi, the death of Benes and Masaryk, and the drama of the Berlin Airlift of 1948. The world had been a busy place, full of tensions and conflicts and charges and recriminations and he had had an unremembered part of it, though of course on a much smaller scale.

  Sherwood chuckled when he read the account of the election of Truman, went on through the hanging of Japanese war criminals, the conflict in Israel, the exploding of an atom bomb in Russia. And then he was astonished to read of still another war, this time in Korea, coming so soon after the end of the war in Europe and the Pacific. Then there was an era in which everybody in the U.S. was worried about people in high places being communists, but it was two Puerto Ricans who tried to shoot their way in to kill the President. He found the recorded history almost unbelievable, as if someone had sat down and written the most fantastic things he could think of, the most frightening being the hydrogen bomb.

  He read on through the election of Eisenhower, his reelection, the Suez Canal incident, and finally closed the book and leaned back in the leather chair and thought we didn’t really do much did we, fighting that war, because there is still discontent and uneasiness and violence and rioting. But there were signs things were working out better. The United Nations, for one thing, and the change in Russia’s attitude since the death of Stalin. Maybe there was reason to hope after all.

  Sherwood glanced idly at the headlines of the newspapers in the rack, headlines that would be tomorrow’s history, turning his head sidewise to read them One caught his eye and he leaned forward to see it better. It was a small story in the New York Times dated several days ago, and the headline said:

  AMNESIA VICTIM STILL UNIDENTIFIED

  Picking out the details, Sherwood read that a well-dressed girl had wandered into a precinct station in New York and said she couldn’t remember her name or anything about herself. She was taken to Bellevue where she remained while doctors sought to determine the cause of her amnesia, while police tried to find out who she was.

  The paragraph that interested Sherwood most was this one:

  Dr. Harold Aspinall said late Tuesday the girl had suffered a blow on the right temple which could account for her amnesia, though he explained the injury was hardly detectable. He also said it was not unusual for weeks Or even months to pass before a patient recovered his memory in such cases.

  Now Sherwood leaned back to consider this information. He had almost forgotten his affliction, accepting it as a thing irrevocable and willing to go on from there, reconstructing the pattern of his past by digging into it. Now he saw there was a possible shorter route, a direct line to the hidden past, a key that would unlock the remembrances he knew must still be there.

  He reached up both hands, started pressing areas on his skull. An injury, that was it. A blow—what did the story say? Right temple? He pressed the right temple, then the left, ran exploring fingers over the remainder of his cranium seeking the injured spot. The girl could have done it. That would account for the look she gave him, the apprehension in her eyes, for she was wondering what her handiwork had wrought.

  But there was no injured area he could find. But then he remembered the story said it was hardly detectable, so he pushed his fingers hard against his scalp, probing viciously for the sore spot that might be there.

  He was so intent on his investigation he did not hear her approach. It was only when a pair of women’s flat-heeled shoes came into his field of vision floorwards that he knew someone was there.

  “Something wrong?” the librarian asked coldly.

  “Just nits,” he said.

  She gasped and retreated to the safety of the charging desk to stare at him.

  He combed his hair, stared right back. When her eyes would not leave his he rose and the World Almanac fell to the floor with a thud. He walked slowly across the floor, amused to see her eyes grow round, her face whiten. When he reached the desk, he said, “Do you have a central exchange telephone book?”

  Her eyes left his long enough for her to get the book from under the counter. She slid it across to him.

  “There’s no need to be frightened,” he said, turning to the classified section, “I’m only going to call a psychiatrist.”

  FOUR

  Dr. Maurice Trefethen sat rocking in his chair only half listening to the tragic recital of wayward events in the life of the fat man in the armchair at the side of his desk. A youngish man of fifty, Dr. Trefethen was one of the more successful medical psychiatrists in Los Angeles, referred to by his friends as a brilliant man, by his enemies (with whom he refused to compromise) as a disgrace to his profession, mostly because of his unswerving devotion to Pavlov and the conditioned reflex theory of psychotherapy to the exclusion of everything else.

  He allowed his black, wiry hair to rise in disarray from his head because he was something of a showman, believing people expected a psychiatrist to look strange, being conversant with madness as they are, and it probably accounted in part for his ability to snatch his share of trade from the faith healers who seem to gravitate to Los Angeles.

  That, plus schmaltz, which Trefethen insisted must be an essential ingredient of any contact with the public. This does not mean Trefethen was not a legitimate nor a capable psychiatrist; it only means he was realistic about competition and human needs.

  Now he rose, a small man in an impeccable white smock, and the fat man rose with him. They walked to the door and Trefethen patted him encouragingly between the shoulder blades, telling him he was wasting his time worrying when he could channel such energy into something useful. “Work,” he said. “That’s the answer. Whenever you feel yourself slipping into worry, start working.”

  “You think there’s hope then, Doc?”

  “Yes. Of course. Your heart hasn’t given up, no? Then we won’t give up either. You do what I say.”

  “Well…”

  Dr. Trefethen clucked, like a mother hen, patted the man’s broad back again. The fat man looked down at the doctor as if he’d like to believe.

  “You have the medicine,” Trefethen said. “You take it when you feel yourself slipping, yes? It’s enough until next time.”

  “Next Monday, then?”

  “Next Monday.” Trefethen nodded and pushed him gently through the door. Once the man was gone the doctor shook his head, returned to his desk, sat in his chair and entered a few notes in a meticulous hand on a card. Even as he wrote he thought: Why do they insist on telling me dreams? If they think dreams are important, they ought to go to a psychoanalyst. When he finished writing he put the card in its proper place in a drawer file, swung around in his chair to gaze out the window to weigh what he had written on the card, as he always did. Then, satisfied that what he had written was correct, he picked up the patient schedule. A free hour. He breathed with relief.

  The relief was only momentary. His receptionist-secretary had heard the door to the hallway close and now she buzzed his intercom briefly. Trefethen flicked the switch. “Yes?”

  “A Mr. Sherwood to see you, Doctor. He’s been waiting almost an hour. I told him I thought you might see him this period. Shall I send him in?”

  “Is he a referral?”

  “No. Voluntary.”

  “All right. Send him in.”

  Dr. Trefethen prided himself on his analysis of patients by the way they stepped through the door to his outer office. Those first few seconds always helped establish the way it was to go, whether he should be gruff, appeasing, humorous, disinterested or any
of the other manners he was capable of assuming.

  When Sherwood walked in, Trefethen saw a broad-shouldered, large man of about thirty or possibly a year or two more, with untroubled, honest blue eyes, a fine, clean-cut face, neatly dressed and composed. He extended a hand and slipped smoothly into the chair at the side of the desk. The handshake was firm, the man’s palms were dry, his eyes never left the doctor’s face as he told him his name in a clear, well-modulated, unhesitating voice. For a moment Trefethen thought he had seen him somewhere, had heard his name before, but he dismissed it. Diagnosis: Nothing wrong with this man.

  “Just what is your trouble?” Trefethen said affably. Lacking a clue as to how to proceed, it only remained for him to be himself.

  “I want information more than anything else,” Sherwood said. “I’m willing to pay you for your time.”

  “There is no trouble then with you? Is that right?”

  Sherwood smiled. “Before I answer that, will you answer a few questions for me?”

  “All right, if you insist. But this is irregular.”

  “Are you required to notify the police in cases of amnesia?”

  Trefethen frowned, surprised at the question. He studied Sherwood’s face. It would not be Sherwood who was amnesic. Too alert. Too confident. Too much of an awareness of where he was. “No-o-o, not exactly, Mr. Sherwood. Not if the case is being handled by competent people. You know of such a case? Yes?”

  “I do know of such a case, yes. But before I say anything about it, I want to know everything about amnesia.”

  Trefethen laughed. “Come now, Mr. Sherwood. Everything?”

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds. What I mean is. I know nothing about it and would like to. Perhaps it would help me determine if it is a case of amnesia.”

  “You want to diagnose the case, with my help.”

  “Well…”

  “Just what is it about amnesia you want to know?”

  “I understand it can be caused by a bang on the head.”

  “A lot of things can be caused by a bang on the head,” Trefethen said dryly. “Amnesia is only one.”

  Sherwood moved uncomfortably in the chair. “Can anything else cause it?”

  “Amnesia,” the doctor said blandly, “is not complicated. We simply do not remember unpleasant things as readily as we do pleasant ones. All of us suffer from amnesia to some degree.”

  “But what if a person forgets even the pleasant things, all the experiences for a certain period?”

  Trefethen shrugged. “When an experience is a particularly trying one, a person sometimes unconsciously inhibits or ‘forgets’ his past difficulties up to and including it. Do you see?”

  Sherwood nodded, but he wasn’t ready yet to give up the idea of violence. “Could a person be hit, with no visual marks remaining and still be a victim of amnesia?

  “Possibly. There could be damage to brain cells and even severe impairment to circulation without any outward sign. Poisons can do the same thing.”

  “Poisons?” Sherwood said eagerly, sitting up straighter.

  “Yes.” Trefethen looked at Sherwood without expression. “Does this person have amnesia yet or were you thinking of giving it to him? Or is it her?”

  Sherwood smiled. “I’m not a criminal.”

  “Why then are you so, stimulated by the thought of poison?”

  “I’m not. At least not the way you think I am. I am only curious.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Because, as I say, I’m curious. Now what about poisons?”

  Trefethen leaned back. “Poisons can act directly on nerves to cause amnesia, yes. But there are accompanying symptoms.”

  “Oh.” Sherwood relaxed in the chair again. Poisons were out.

  “The changes in brain tissue that accompany age can cause forgetfulness, often amnesia. Is this person old?”

  “No.”

  “Is this person about thirty-five, six feet tall, with blue eyes and black hair by any chance?”

  “I prefer not to say,” Sherwood said with some annoyance.

  Trefethen said sharply, “I do not like discussing a phantom patient or playing guessing games. If you think there is something wrong with someone, you should take the subject to a doctor. It cannot be done through an intermediary.”

  “How much do you charge?”

  “Twenty-five dollars an hour.”

  Sherwood withdrew twenty-five dollars from his billfold, put them in front of the doctor. “Now tell me anything else you know about amnesia.”

  Trefethen snapped his fingers. “Just like that, eh?” He looked at the money, then at Sherwood. He raised his hand as if to brush it off the desk. Then he sighed, slumped back in his chair. “All right, Mr. Sherwood, I will tell you briefly what you want to know.”

  “That’s better.”

  “I’m glad you think so. There are two ways a person can have amnesia: organically or functionally. The organic way is much more common, consisting of neural languor which renders the brain temporarily incapable of retaining and recalling stimuli. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.” Sherwood settled himself comfortably in the chair, drew out a cigarette and lighted it.

  “This can be caused a number of ways,” the doctor continued. “Through acute infection, epileptic seizure or, say metabolic convulsion. Are you still with me, yes?”

  “After a fashion, yes.”

  “Good. Now the functional type of amnesia is protean, but always due to the descent of an emotional block. Then comes what we term fugue, the three stages that invariably follow, though their duration is not at all standard. The first is complete dissociation, oblivescence, a state resembling somnambulism; the second is lightened oblivion where only certain facts are missing, a partial amnesia; and the third is full functioning consciousness which can come quite suddenly with all the missing parts filled in.

  “The most common type of person to have an amnesic experience is the psychoneurotic, the severely so. He is sometimes constitutionally unable to withstand the rigors of reality, and the beginnings of this lie deep in the encysted complexities of the past.”

  “In the unconscious mind, is that it, Doctor?”

  Trefethen snorted. “There is no unconscious mind.”

  “The subconscious, then.”

  “There is no subconscious either. It’s all one. There is no id, ego or super-ego either. That’s mumbo-jumbo talk of the witchdoctor analysts.” The doctor rocked in his chair indignantly studying the wall behind Sherwood. “Does what I have told you answer your question?”

  Sherwood shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Why?” Trefethen asked with some surprise.

  “Because it doesn’t tell me why I don’t recall a single thing that happened during the past ten years.”

  The doctor stopped rocking. “Then it is you.” He reached into a drawer and brought out a blank card. “That name—that Walter Sherwood—seems a familiar one. I suppose you merely chose that. You really don’t know who you are, yes?”

  “No. I’m Walter Sherwood, all right. I remember everything up until May fifteenth, nineteen forty-six. This morning I woke up in a motel and found it was nineteen fifty-seven. That’s all there is to it. Eleven years missing.”

  “How can you be sure you’re Walter Sherwood? Do you have definite memories of this?”

  “Of course. I remember everything in my childhood.”

  “You do?” Trefethen smiled thinly. “I’ll bet you don’t remember your third grade teacher.”

  “I certainly do. She was Rosemary Bush.”

  “Mmm. What was your principal’s name?”

  “Mr. Snearly. Oscar Snearly. At least until I got to the fifth grade. Then we had a man named Spencer Brewer.”

  “What grade did you get in freshman English in high school?”

  “I got a ‘C.’”

  Trefethen darted him a look. “Did your folks have a car?”

  “W
hy?”

  “What was the license of it, say in nineteen thirty-tour?” Sherwood thought a moment. Then he said, “I think it was four three five seven two.”

  “Come now, Mr. Sherwood or whatever your name is, you don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “You asked me, so I told you. Did you think I couldn’t remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “No one could possibly remember such trivia,” Trefethen said calmly, stroking his chin and studying him. “Especially a person with amnesia. Just what are you up to, Mr. Sherwood?”

  “Are you telling me I don’t remember what I remember? It’s bad enough not remembering eleven years without your trying to take away what I do remember.”

  Trefethen fixed him with a baleful eye. “Stop trying to fool me. You’re no amnesic. If you could remember things like that you’d be a hypermnesic.”

  “A hyper what?”

  “Never mind. It’s merely the opposite of amnesia, an exaggerated degree of retention or recall.” He sighed, said tiredly, “Which one of my distinguished colleagues put you up to this, anyway? I want to be in on the joke.”

  “Joke?” Sherwood said blankly.

  “Yes, joke.” Then as Trefethen looked at him, his eyes brightened with sudden remembrance. “I remember now,” he said.

  “Believe me, Doctor,” Sherwood said earnestly, “this is no joke to me.”

  “I fancy not, since I just remembered where I read the name Walter Sherwood. I suppose your middle name is Evan.”

  “Yes,” Sherwood said. “How did you know?”

  “Ha!” Trefethen said, standing.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means get out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you couldn’t possibly be Walter Evan Sherwood!”

  “But I am!”

  “All right, prove it.”

  Sherwood sank back in his chair. “I can’t. When I woke up this morning I found nothing but identification for a man named Morley Donn Fisher in my billfold.”

  “I imagine,” Trefethen said witheringly, no longer interested, and glancing at his desk clock. “Now if you don’t mind, Mr. Fisher, I have another appointment coming up.” He pushed the twenty-five dollars across the desk. “You might as well take this with you.”