He had started up the walk when an old man sitting on the porch of the house next door called to him.
“What you doing hack in town, Doc?”
Sherwood stopped, did not know what to say to him.
“Somebody said you quit out there.” The man’s chuckle drifted across the wide, sunlighted swath of green. “Just goes to show you shouldn’t believe all you hear. Ain’t that right?”
Sherwood said only, “That’s right,” and hoped it would shut him up. It didn’t.
“How’s the Mrs.?”
He was tempted to say she broke her leg and he had to shoot her, because it was none of the old man’s business, but he only replied, “Fine,” and then as he continued up the walk he offered a silent prayer that she would be. Of course there was no basis for this wish, no more than there had been a reason for her to leave him at the motel. Why had she? Dr. Booey said she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d run off, especially if she thought she was needed, and John Trankle, the Loop physician who had known her and supplied the picture of her that proved she was the girl in the motel (it had bothered Sherwood a little that he had kept it), had only fine things to say about her, what a good student she was, how helpful she had been in school, particularly to him, and how he had asked her to marry him once but she had just laughed at him. That part of it rankled Sherwood the most and he was not immediately aware why. How could you feel possession for a wife you had never known, a woman you had seen but once and then only briefly and under trying circumstances?
He had half expected to find her there in Merrittville at the house ahead of time, but the old man next door had spoiled that. He wouldn’t have asked about her if he had seen her go in.
He tried several keys before he found the one that fitted the lock, let himself into the cool interior. As he moved from the small hall to the living room he noticed the musty smell that. houses get that are closed in the summer, and it stayed with him as he toured the downstairs and upstairs (he tried not to pay too much attention to her things, this woman who had shared six years of his unremembered life), found the house to be much as he had expected from the outside, very old, ornate, but comfortable and brightly decorated. He wondered: Am I renting this or do I own it? And he chuckled at the absurdity of a man’s not knowing a thing like that.
So far, so good, he thought. A rallying point. I’ve come so far, a long way for a man with amnesia. From Los Angeles, to be exact. I’ve found I’ve gone to Midwest College, Ryerson Medical School, knew a man there by the name of Dr. Booey (what the devil’s his first name?), and I was an eager beaver who got excellent grades and took a job at Schlessenger Institute in Merrittville, Michigan. I’m married to a girl named Virginia, and we live in this house.
What next? What part shall I unravel now?
The Institute.
Andrew Schlessenger is the name, according to Dr. Booey. Dr. Andrew Schlessenger.
Maybe Virginia would be there.
* * * *
He nearly missed Schlessenger Institute on his swing west of town, thinking the modern building he passed on his right was a motel or resort, but the sign on the lawn registered on his brain after he had turned away to look for it farther on. The sign said Schlessenger Institute.
So he found a side road, turned around and drove back slowly, taking in the contemporary structure built of ledge-rock and brick and wood with an overhanging roof, a long, low building that hugged the ground and had none of the severity he had expected. The road was slightly higher and Sherwood could look over it enough to see it was deeper than he had thought, the wing of the L extending far to the rear.
He turned into the cement drive and parked with three other cars to one side of the entrance and went in. At once he was in a small, elegantly furnished, thickly carpeted waiting room that would have done justice to a stock brokerage office. His presence must have registered somewhere because a woman opened one of the thick paneled doors and looked at him questioningly.
All at once her face brightened.
“Why, Dr. Sherwood!” A thin woman in her thirties wearing a trim business suit with a lapel watch, she came toward him, extending a hand, smiling, and he could see she was genuinely pleased to see him. “I never expected to see you!”
“You might say that goes both ways.” He took the hand. It was soft and cool.
“You ought to let people know when you’re coming, Doctor. You gave me quite a start.” She turned her head slightly as if remembering there was someone behind her. “Dr. Schlessenger will certainly be surprised to see you.”
“He’s here then?”
“Of course. Where did you think he’d be?” She laughed a little and her eyes were without guile and they stood there awkwardly, the woman radiating friendliness and waiting for him to say something and Sherwood wanting to go directly to the doctor’s office but not wanting to ask the way.
“Maybe you’d better be the advance guard,” he suggested brilliantly. “Don’t want to surprise him, too.”
“Oh, he’ll be surprised either way.” She turned and he stepped to her side as she walked toward the door she had come through. “We were all disturbed when you stepped out like that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
They were through the door now into a small inner office, obviously the woman’s. She stopped before another door and knocked.
“Yes?” from the inside.
She opened the door. Over her shoulder Sherwood could see a ruddy face, a neat blond mustache, athlete’s shoulders, slicked back thin blond hair and bright blue eyes, all belonging to a man who sat at a massive desk.
“Dr. Sherwood’s come back,” she said simply, stepping aside for him to see.
“Sherwood?” The man twisted a little in the swivel chair to get a better look at him across the room and said, “It is Sherwood! What the devil are, you doing here?” He left the chair and came cross the carpeted floor in slow, easy strides, extending a large hand that Sherwood, in shaking it, found strong. “So you’ve decided to come back!”
“Believe it or not,” the woman said, “he just walked in.” She closed the door behind her as she went out.
Schlessenger guided him to a leather chair beside the desk, saying gruffly, “Sit down, Doctor,” and taking the swivel chair behind the desk. “You might have let us know you were coming.”
“I didn’t know what kind of reception I’d get,” Sherwood said, shooting in the dark. Schlessenger was a few years older than he, the other side of forty. Good looking. Distinguished looking, actually.
“Schlessenger Institute is human,” Schlessenger said. “As such it allows for human failings in its employees. I am least tolerant of myself, as any of them can tell you, and as you already know.” He coughed a little, as if trying to emphasize this point. “You may be in charge of a research organization someday, my boy. Then you’ll know the headache it really is. What brings you back to Merrittville? Ready to go back to work?”
“Just following a thread, Doctor.”
“A thread, eh? Well, you left plenty of them dangling here when you quit, Walter. Men like you aren’t easily replaced.” There was no question of the admonition in his voice. He went on dryly, “But don’t get the idea I’ve been hurt. No Schlessenger Institute Research Fellow is indispensable.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Except me, of course.”
Schlessenger sighed, rose from the swivel chair and moved to a cabinet at the side of the room, throwing open the doors that revealed a well-stocked liquor supply, saying, “I suppose you’ve found things difficult on your own, eh? Research fellows need good direction.” When Sherwood did not answer, he said, “My guess is you’re wondering if your position has been filled. Well, it isn’t. I thought you’d be back for it.”
Returning from the cabinet, he handed Sherwood a drink and said, “For your information, nothing has changed. Black is still fathering his parasites, Rayburn has been breeding more resistant mice strains every day and sending them into the wild b
lue yonder each new crop, and Cox, Wilhelm and Heneberry are still occupied. Of course all of this shouldn’t be news to you, but don’t press me for details. You know it’s not my policy to discuss the work of one man with another.”
Sherwood tasted the drink. It was good scotch. He knew by Schlessenger’s immaculate appearance and the plush office that it would be good scotch. But why didn’t the man stop talking? He wanted to shout: Why don’t you shut up or say something that means something? I had counted on your bringing something back to me and now you’re pushing it farther away than ever.
“Do you, Walter?” Schlessenger was saying.
“Do I what?”
“Do you want to come back?”
Sherwood moved, uncomfortable in the leather chair, knowing he would have to go through all the questions again and not relishing the prospect. Well, where to begin? Schlessenger said, “Something bothering you?”
Sherwood nodded. “To put bluntly, yes.” He smiled wryly. “I never saw you before in my life.”
Schlessenger’s features went slack, the chair came forward, the doctor put his drink on the polished desk top and looked across at him concernedly. “What did you say?”
“I said I don’t recall ever seeing you, I don’t know you and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Schlessenger sucked in his breath. “Whatever’s wrong with you, Walter?”
“I just told you. I don’t remember anything.”
“But you must remember!”
Sherwood shook his head. “I don’t recall anything of the last eleven years. I’ve been retracing my steps, following a thread, as I said, and the thread has brought me here. What can you tell me about Walter Sherwood, Doctor Schlessenger? All I know is I came to work here in nineteen fifty-one. That’s all. What happened after that?”
Schlessenger stared.
They all stared, didn’t they? Trefethen, Booey, Trankle…and now Schlessenger.
“Walter,” Schlessenger said in a choked voice, “I—” Then his face hardened, and he said sharply, “Walter, I have no time for practical jokes.”
“Neither have I, Doctor.”
“But eleven years—Walter, it’s unbelievable!”
“It is nevertheless true. It so happens I woke up in Los Angeles on July eleventh and I don’t remember anything before that back to May fifteenth, nineteen forty-six. There you have it.”
Schlessenger looked startled. “July eleventh? Why, that was only last week.”
“I’ve lived five years in the past week.”
“But—” Schlessenger’s face was blanched and he seemed to have difficulty going on. Then he said, “Walter, on July tenth you were at the Coronado Motel. You spent the night there. Do you mean to tell me—”
“You know about that?”
“Of course I do. We all stayed at the motel. Don’t you remember? You, your wife and I. We were going to the convention in Santa Barbara. Do you mean to tell me you really don’t remember?”
TEN
Sherwood said sharply, “I said I don’t remember.”
“Of course you did, but—” Schlessenger gave him a look that appealed to him to end this nonsense. “Walter, I—”
“What about the motel?” Sherwood prodded relentlessly.
Schlessenger let out his breath in a big sigh. “I was in the next cabin and…” He shook his head. “This is ridiculous.”
“The convention. You said something about a convention.”
“I went to the convention. You never made it.”
“Why?”
Schlessenger frowned, rose with his drink, started to walk the floor slowly, in a study, choosing his words carefully. “Walter, I’ve had twenty some odd years of schooling, I’ve waded through thousands of books, have been counseled by hundreds of learned men and lately I’ve run a research organization. But never, never have I run across anything as bizarre as this thing you tell me. While amnesia isn’t my province, I pride myself on how much I’ve been able to absorb from other fields, including psychiatry, and I want you to know yours is truly an unusual case. What makes it almost unbelievable is that you—well, you were so close to the Institute and to me, and now”—he turned to Sherwood—“you sit there a complete stranger.”
“Why didn’t I make it to the convention?”
Schlessenger shrugged. “I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish I could tell you.” He returned to the desk. “I’ll tell you what I can. Maybe it would help, if you really don’t remember.” He sat in the chair, put his drink on the desk, his elbows on the desk top, fingers touching before his face, his eyes focussing on the opposite wall. “We went out together in your car. You, your wife and I. We made it a leisurely trip out, even stopping at the Grand Canyon because Mrs. Sherwood had never seen it.”
Schlessenger turned to him. “You were unusually quiet, Walter, and—well, a little jumpy. I remember being rather concerned about it. Maybe what was going to happen was getting ready to happen even then, but perhaps I should have done something about it, but I had my mind on other things—the convention, mostly.
“When we reached Los Angeles you suggested we stop in Eagle Rock. You said you used to live there. I had no objection. We could have reached Santa Barbara that night, but there would have been no particular point in doing so. We stayed at the Coronado, you and Ginny in one cabin and I in the next. I had no inkling of what was going to happen.”
“What did happen?”
“You woke me up at about two in the morning. I went to the door and there you stood looking, I should say, a little wild-eyed. I’ll admit I was a little surly. I’d been awakened from a sound sleep and I thought you and Ginny had been out carousing around. Of course I should have known better. I did, as soon as I saw you were in your robe and perfectly sober. I invited you in and asked you what was the trouble. You sat down and told me you were quitting. Just like that. You said you were getting out of research entirely.
“Of course I was shocked. I asked you why and you said you’d been thinking about it ever since you came to the Institute and had finally decided that night to have done with it. I tried to argue you out of it, but you were immovable. I urged you to think it over, take a leave of absence if necessary, but you said you’d made your decision and you were through right then and there.”
“Did I give any reason?”
Schlessenger shook his head gravely. “I tried to get you to talk sense, but you were so wrought up you were incapable of it. I asked you if your wife concurred in the decision and you said she did, but I wasn’t satisfied until you brought Mrs. Sherwood over. She was, if anything, more upset about the whole thing than you were. But she said it was your decision to make and if that’s the way you felt about it she wasn’t going to try to change you. She was obviously worried to death about you, just as I was. Why you waited until we reached Los Angeles to tell us such a thing I’ll never understand.”
“You accepted the resignation then?”
“What else could I do? I learned long ago you can’t get work out of people who have their minds and hearts on something else. Oh, we sat around arguing about it and there was a little name-calling, but there was no changing your mind.”
“Didn’t you try to see us in the morning?”
“To be frank,” Schlessenger said, “the longer I thought about it the angrier I got. I slept very little the rest of the night and when morning came I ignored you completely, rented a car and drove the rest of the way to Santa Barbara. When you stepped out through the door after you told me you quit, you were through, I decided. I’ve always believed in a clean break, once it’s been made. No recriminations, no apologies. You said that’s the way you wanted it; that’s the way I let you have it.”
“I see.” Now the thread was complete. From Eagle Rock to Midwest to Ryerson to Merrittville and back to Eagle Rock. And it all added up to nothing really helpful. Sherwood had thought that perhaps knowing all that had preceded the blanking out his memory would come back in a r
ush. But the blank spaces were just as empty as before, filled in only by what he’d learned from others, and not one thing had triggered the expected rush of recall. There wasn’t even the beginning of a recollection.
Schlessenger had been watching him and said now in a large voice, “Don’t look so downcast, Walter. It is my professional opinion that this amnesia of yours won’t last forever.”
Sherwood said morosely, “I wish I could be sure of that.”
“Be sure of it because I am. It’s obvious your wrought-up state was responsible. 4Armed with that knowledge, any psychiatrist ought to break down the barrier to the unremembered time. It’s done every day.”
“I don’t think it will be that easy.”
Schlessenger said sharply, “Don’t contradict me. I don’t like it. It so happens I know what I’m talking about, my boy. I’m telling you progress can. be made in such conditions as yours. That business out in Los Angeles was the straw that broke the camel’s back, to employ a cliche. The rubber band tightens and grows thin as it stretches, but it can’t be stretched too far or it will break. That’s what has happened to you, Walter. Amnesia’s not fatal. It’s merely the symptoms of some deeper trouble. You need treatment and my advice is not to delay it. There are some good men in Detroit.”
“I thought coming here to Merrittville might be better than treatment. But it has done nothing.”
“Of course it hasn’t. You need expert help. It’s nothing you can do by yourself, believe me. I’m sure your wife would agree with me. By the way, where is Mrs. Sherwood?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“Haven’t seen her?”
“Not since all this started.”
“Has she left you?”
“Yes.” There was no need to go into it.
“I never thought she’d be capable of a thing like that.” His eyes were dark in reproach. “I thought she was a fine woman. What a time to desert you! Just when you need her most. Do you have any idea where she is?”
“I’m afraid not. I thought she might have come back to Merrittville.”
“She didn’t even tell you where she was going? I’d say that was unpardonably cruel of her.”
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack Page 30
