The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack

by Robert Silverberg

  The door Sherwood had come through suddenly opened and both men turned to stare at the woman who stood there.

  “Oh!” she said. “I—I didn’t know—Miss Lawson wasn’t out here and—”

  “Where’s that woman,” Schlessenger said, rising. “Sorry, Andrew,” the woman said, then she nodded to Sherwood and said, “Doctor.”

  Sherwood nodded id return. There was something odd about this woman and the way their glances locked for a moment. She only looked away when Schlessenger said, “Georgia, Dr. Sherwood and I—”

  “I see,” she said apologetically. “I shouldn’t have come barging in.” She backed through the door and closed it, her eyes trying desperately to keep from Sherwood’s.

  “My wife,” Schlessenger said, nodding toward the door and sighing. “You’re supposed to know her, so introductions would have sounded strange to her and I’d have to explain…and I don’t know how you feel about everybody knowing…” His voice trailed off.

  “It’s all right,” Sherwood said, suddenly sharing Schlessenger’s embarrassment and not knowing why.

  “Would you like to see your laboratory?” Schlessenger asked suddenly. “Perhaps it would help bring something back.”

  “Yes, I’d like to do that,” Sherwood said, rising with him, “but I suppose it will be like everything else: completely strange.”

  “It will be if you’re convinced of it.” Schlessenger led him through a door. “You’ve got to think in terms of your memory coming back or it never will. It’s always like this, first total inability to recall, then a glimmer here, a glimmer there, and finally a rush of remembering that brings everything back.”

  They walked down a bright, wide hallway, passing doors labeled Dr. Anthony Black, Dr. Robert Rayburn, Dr. Herman Wilhelm, and others, all in gold letters on polished brass doorknobs, thick, heavy doors, until they came to the one labeled Dr. Walter E. Sherwood. Schlessenger inserted a silver key, opened the door and clicked on the lights, though there was no need for them with all the daylight coming through the windows at the top of the far wall.

  “Well, here you are,” Schlessenger said. “Remember it at all?”

  Both men were silent as they stood there, Sherwood seeing the gleaming instruments, the fine array of apparatus, all of it strange to him, conscious of Schlessenger’s eyes on him, feeling all the while as if he were standing in someone’s grave, still knowing his hands were the hands that must have moved that beaker there, that had set the knurled knobs of that machine over there, whatever it was, a place of study for a studious stranger, the stranger that was Walter Evan Sherwood a month ago, a year ago, and more.

  “Well?” Schlessenger asked hopefully.

  “Nothing,” Sherwood said huskily. “I’m afraid it does nothing. I wouldn’t know where to begin in a place like this.”

  “That’s too bad, Walter, it really is.”

  “What did I do here?”

  “I have a large grant from the National Science Foundation to carry on lines of research that appear to be important to me,” Schlessenger explained. “I selected you from among many because I had heard about your work, read some of your articles. You were an individualist and that’s what I wanted, a man with imagination and daring. You didn’t care much for established fact or rules or precedent. You had directness and inspiration.”

  Schlessenger’s voice boomed from the walls as if in eulogy for the man whose tomb this was, this clutter of machines and instruments the mementoes in the shrine, even to the notes in his own hand Sherwood saw on a long bench.

  “I never regretted for a minute that you came to work for me,” Schlessenger said. “I gave you a free hand.”

  “What kind of work was I doing?”

  Schlessenger shrugged. “Oh, you had a lot of irons in the fire. I don’t know just which of your various projects you were concerned with at the moment you left.”

  “I had more than one thing going, then?’

  “When you tired of one you’d go on to the next.”

  “Didn’t I have a main project, a number one interest?”

  The doctor eyed him without expression. “Yes, but it’s quite involved, Walter, and in your present condition, I…”

  “I’ll try to understand.”

  “You wouldn’t, Walter.”

  Sherwood grinned. “Then there’d be no harm in telling me, would there?”

  “Well…” Schlessenger flushed. “You’ve forgotten your schooling, it’s stupid to try, but if you insist…” He sat on one of the benches. “Over there” he said, pointing to one section of the room where a long machine that looked like a radio control panel covered half the wall with a window above it looking into another room, “is an electroencephalograph. Next to it is a toposcope, that device with that cluster of cathode ray tubes in the form of the cranium as seen from above. You were working with both of those, stimulating the cortex, the sensorimotor strip, the various gyri. in that area you were evaluating the efficacy of the electronic stroboscope in producing desirable paroxysmal cerebral dysrhythmia. Follow me?”

  “No,” Sherwood said, feeling an anger starting because Schlessenger had deliberately cloaked his remarks in technical language. “I don’t understand it at all.”

  “Well, I said you wouldn’t, remember?”

  “You could have put it a hell of a lot more simply, if you ask me.”

  “I could have,” Schlessenger said tartly, “but I don’t see why I should.” Then he said, “It will all be coming back to you soon enough.”

  “You think so?”

  “Certainly,” Schlessenger said, walking to the door. “Shall we go?”

  “I suppose,” Sherwood said, joining him and taking one last look around. He saw a safe in a corner, a thing he hadn’t noticed before, and was on the point of asking the doctor about it when Schlessenger pulled the door shut saying, “I’d introduce you to the others except that they are all at work.” They were going back down the hall the way they had come. “They’re working on problems and it’s best not to disturb them when they are. I’d suggest your not meeting any of them anyway in your condition.”

  When they entered the office again Schlessenger said, “Yours is definitely a case of classical amnesia, Walter, and I want to see you undergoing treatment as quickly as possible. You can’t come back here the way you are.”

  Sherwood leaned on the leather chair facing Schlessenger, who had taken the chair behind the desk again. “I just thought of something, Doctor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Morley Donn Fisher. I have a driver’s license made out in that name with all my pertinent statistics. It seems I live in a nonexistent place in Webster, Illinois.”

  “I suppose that would puzzle you. But it was just a matter of security precaution, that’s all.”

  “Security precaution? Why?”

  “I always insist on an alternate identity when away from the Institute.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Obviously,” Schlessenger said dryly. “It’s like everything else.”

  “But there are no guards around here, no security precautions that I can see. Why should a thing like that be necessary? Was my work of such a secret nature?”

  Schlessenger opened a tray on the desk, offered Sherwood a cigarette, took one himself, lit Sherwood’s and, with the lighter in his right hand, paused before he spun the wheel, gazing at Sherwood, drawing on his cigarette.

  “I don’t know what I should tell you, since you are no longer apprised of what goes on here, but—” and he paused to spark the lighter “—I have a dozen memoranda from the Department of Defense and several government agencies down the line suggesting such security precautions and offering assistance in cases where it is needed.” He inhaled deeply, blew out a plume of smoke.

  “Obviously you thought they were needed.”

  “I assumed a different identity myself, Walter.”

  “You still haven’t said why.”

  �
�Up here at Merrittville,” Schlessenger said patiently, “a stranger stands out like a red flag—at least most of the year he does. So there is no need for much security safeguard here, at least anything elaborate. But out on the road it’s a different story. Perhaps you don’t know there is still a well-organized espionage system in this country and anything we can do to prevent incidents or mishaps, including outright kidnapping, is worth trying. You have read, no doubt, about scientists who supposedly fled to other countries, carrying their own country’s secrets with them.”

  “What you are saying then is that what I was doing was vital to the defense of the United States?”

  “What work isn’t? Farming, manufacturing, medicine—name anything. But farming and most manufacturing and medicine aren’t done on grants from the National Science Foundation. That way you come close to defense.”

  Sherwood shook his head. “I still don’t see why.”

  “Why shouldn’t I try to do everything I can for you?” the doctor said with less grace than usual. “You’re being rather unkind, I’d say, for the protection I arranged for.” Then he softened. “Walter, it’s just the way things are done nowadays. You’ve been out of touch for eleven years. Why, the government itself insisted on a thorough check on you before I was allowed to touch you. Now do you understand?”

  “Frankly, no.”

  Schlessenger stiffened, said coolly, “Would you like to see a few directives on that very subject?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I’m not sure I appreciate the curious tack your mind has taken, Walter. We’ve had our differences, but mostly along lines of procedure, never on loyalty or motives.” He looked at his curved wrist watch. “I’m sorry, but I have an appointment, Walter. He’s probably waiting in the outer office right now.” As he moved Sherwood to the door, he said, “I’ll give some thought to your affliction. I know a dozen good men in the field. You keep in touch, do you hear?”

  “Yes,” Sherwood said without feeling. To his surprise there was someone waiting in the outer office.

  * * * *

  The air outside was bracing and balmy and not unlike California air and the sun in the sky, he decided, looked no different from what it did in Los Angeles, or Chicago, or the Pacific, which was a good thing to know because no matter how unkind time would be to him there would always be basic things like sun, air and earth, though the people would change and be older, and so would he, until he could grow older no more but cease to enjoy these things, and he thought: Why the worry? Why am I pursuing this thing? Why don’t I just take things for what they are and start my life over again and forget trying to tie those loose thread-ends together?

  He went to the car, a study of a man, deep in thought, head down, frowning. He reached for the door handle and looked up into bright brown eyes.

  It was Georgia. Mrs. Schlessenger. She was standing by the car door and now that she saw him she turned to look furtively back at the entrance. She was a head shorter than he, a woman in a gray skirt and white sweater, fine-boned and youthful-looking, freckled and intense now as she looked at him again with urgency in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Sherwood said. “I didn’t see you.”

  She said nothing, but Sherwood could see the white knuckles of the hand that clutched the side of the car. Seeing him look at it, she self-consciously removed the hand and it left a moist imprint, and her hands had difficulty settling themselves, twisting and turning, until she forced them to her sides where they remained clenched.

  “Did you want to say something?” Sherwood asked.

  In answer, the woman’s mouth moved as if she would, indeed, like to say something but could not find the strength to do so. Then her eyes welled with tears, she moaned softly, leaned her head against an arm she had flung up on the side of the car.

  He touched her shoulder.

  She winced, turned, and stepped away, and when he started toward her, she said, “No, please!” anti she made long strides toward the building.

  He stared after her.

  Sherwood was still puzzled when he opened the door at 347 Walnut Street, went through the little hallway, and entered the living room to find his wife sitting there waiting for him.

  “Hello,” Virginia said.

  ELEVEN

  Sherwood stood at the door and Virginia sat in the rocker facing him, and they were silent and awkward with immobility. Sherwood thought: she’s lovely.

  The moment stretched out so long they both flushed with the embarrassment of it and their mute examination of each other. Finally he said lamely, “Hello,” and tried to put something of how he felt in the greeting, but when he heard the word it sounded empty and told nothing about his racing heart and his joy in seeing her at last.

  She smiled and the room seemed brighter for it, and she said, “I heard you on the steps and at the door and knew you were coming. Perhaps I shouldn’t have surprised you like this. It wasn’t fair.”

  Now Sherwood’s mind was outracing his heart and he wanted to question her, tell her what was wrong, hear from her the truth of things, yet he didn’t want her to know his complete strangeness yet. From the look of her it seemed she did not bold his running out on her against him, which was good. He said, “I’ve just come from the Institute,” trusting that to be casual and ordinary. He added, “I’m glad you’re here,” and managed a smile.

  Her eyes flickered to her hands, but she forced them up to meet his, bright and determined, and they both laughed a little and the awkwardness lifted slightly.

  “How are things out there?” she asked.

  “All right.”

  The awkwardness rushed in again and they found themselves looking uncertainly at each other, waiting for the next move in the game, Sherwood feeling the sweat on his forehead and thinking have I botched this, does she know, has she guessed?

  Something resolute settled on Virginia’s face and she rose from the rocker. He found her young and sturdy looking and a head shorter than he. He watched as she put a fine-boned hand on the knob of the old rocker and said, “I suppose you are wondering why I left the motel before you returned.” She did not look at him.

  “Please sit down,” he said. He watched her, a pale Virginia now, as she sank back to the chair, and he wondered if she was beginning to be frightened of him. “There is something I have to tell you, something important.” He reached for a straight-backed chair, dragged it across the floor and set it a few feet away facing her. He sat on the edge of the chair and leaned toward her. “It will probably shock you.”

  “Will it?” Her voice was a little shrill, and she knew he was going to tell her about her amnesia, something grave, tell her how long it would be before she would remember him

  “Yes.” He struggled to find the proper words, then said, “The first time I recall seeing you is back in the motel in Los Angeles a week ago. Everything before that is blank for eleven years. I seem to have amnesia.”

  He saw wonderment grow in her eyes, saw the pupils widen in surprise, the face blanch further, and he thought this is a shock to her, will she be able to stand it?

  “You?” she said, her lips barely moving. “You have amnesia?” He could barely hear her.

  “Yes.” He hoped she’d understand, hoped she’d be willing to serve as his memory until he found his again, it would be no easy task, being depended upon for remembering, and unless she went into it whole-heartedly, with complete understanding and without aversion to the mental aberration it was, there would be no sense in trying it. He had to know that before anything else.

  “But—!” She stopped, her mouth open a little, her eyes staring uncomprehendingly.

  Sherwood thought: It’s too much for her.

  Then he said, “It’s not as if I were ready for the booby hatch or something, it’s just that I don’t remember, that’s all. Otherwise I’m perfectly normal. It’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  She swallowed. “I—I’m not frightened. It’s just that—” He waited and
watched her struggle for words.

  Finally she put her lips together and said evenly, “It so happens that I don’t remember either.”

  Now Sherwood stared, clutched the side of the chair at the seat and said hoarsely, “What?”

  “I don’t remember either,” she repeated, tears welling in her eyes. “I woke up in the motel and you were standing there and I didn’t know who in the world you were. Then I went outside and I didn’t know what town it was, I’d never been there before, and when I found out it was Los Angeles, I thought I’d gone crazy.”

  “So it’s happened to you, too,” Sherwood said softly, numbly.

  “Yes,” she said, finding a handkerchief in her purse and dabbing at her eyes. “I thought I was Mrs. Fisher, that I had suddenly come down with amnesia. I was frightened, took some of your money and ran home, hoping it would all end and the memories would come flooding back. But they never did.” She looked at him bleakly. “That’s where I found out who I really am, there at home, and I learned you were a neurophysiologist and I thought when I came here you’d know what to do and all my troubles would be over.” She paused and then said. “Now I find they’re not over at all.”

  Sherwood sat chilled by what she had said. A few minutes ago he felt he had at last reached the end of his search, the vistas of the missing years just beyond Virginia’s eyes, the clouds hovering over the view to be blown away by her account of everything that had occurred, even the little things. Now he knew she had felt the same thing about him, and there would be no revelation, no recounting, no remembrance of things past.

  The blind leading the blind.

  “And you thought I—” She stopped.

  “Yes.”

  Then his chair was at hers, their knees nearly touching, and they talked hard and earnestly, drawn by the common enigma, each ferreting out scraps of information from the other, trying to cover every move, every thought in the days since July eleventh, when the curtain had fallen over their minds, leaving them rudderless and adrift in a world grown older and in many ways strange. And in the talk, faintly felt at first, was strength, a bond, a kinship, a mutual accord the equally infirm feel, each for the other, and the strength grew as they talked the unminded minutes away until the room darkened with the late afternoon.