The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack

by Robert Silverberg

  “A good question, Doctor.” She squirmed down into the seat. “Now, if you please, take me home. I have a lot of cleaning to do.”

  “Cleaning!”

  “Yes, cleaning. If you ever want to think something out, just start housecleaning. It works every time. Ought to try it some time.”

  FOURTEEN

  Sherwood found Georgia Schlessenger in the flower garden in the rear of the substantial Schlessenger residence, a long, elaborate structure that made much use of angles, pitched roof, floor-to-roof glass panes, planting boxes, and a two-car garage. A convertible Cadillac was on the driveway. The other car was undoubtedly at the Institute.

  He had tried ringing the bell, and though he heard the chime, no one came to the door, so he started around the house, taking the flower-lined flagstone walk to the rear. He did not see her at first because she was crouched at the far end of the yard, working the soil with a trowel, a small figure in black slacks and blouse, a Mexican hat hiding her face.

  He started toward her across the neatly trimmed lawn and saw her turn, stop what she was doing to watch him until he was within easy speaking distance. Only then did she forsake her work and rise, her face remarkably white for a woman who worked in a yard, a wondering face filled with freckles and two large eyes of a strange brown. He saw-her hair now, saw that it had a reddish tinge beneath the hat, saw her freckled arms, her work-gloved hands. She looked upset.

  “Dr. Sherwood,” she said simply.

  “I rang,” he said, “but no one came. I saw the car and knew—”

  “Oh, I never answer the chime.” She brushed a lock of hair back up under the crown of the hat with an ungloved hand.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Mrs. Schlessenger.”

  “Really?” She made no move to leave the garden. “Why?”

  “It’s about yesterday.”

  She looked down at the glove she was working off her other hand. “I would like to forget about yesterday.”

  “You wanted to tell me something.”

  “Did I?” The eyes came up, challenging. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “You seemed upset there at the car, and when I tried to find out what was wrong you ran, away.”

  “I suppose it did seem odd.” She turned a little to drop the white gloves beside the trowel at the lawn’s edge. “But you must forget it, Doctor. There was nothing to it really.”

  “Why did you run away?”

  She glanced up at the sky where the sun was advancing to a mid-point in the heavens. “It’s too hot out here to talk. Shall we go inside?”

  She led the way across the lawn to the rear of the house. “Can I get you a drink?” she asked when they were in the kitchen. And when he said she could, she busied herself at the task, stopping at a cabinet and withdrawing a bottle. “Bourbon all right? There’s scotch in the living room bar if you’d rather.”

  “No. Bourbon will be fine.”

  “How’s your wife?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “I always liked Mrs. Sherwood.” She broke a tray of ice cubes, and with silver tongs carefully withdrew two cubes for his glass before filling her own. “Of course I like you both. Andrew thinks a lot of you, too.” Now she measured the bourbon, tossed it in on the ice. “Ginger ale?”

  He nodded, She poured and stirred and then handed him his glass. “I’m sorry to hear of what’s happened,” she said. “Truly sorry.”

  They drank a little, their eyes not leaving each other, Sherwood’s cool and curious, hers a little wide and disturbed.

  “What did you want to tell me yesterday?”

  “We’re back to that?”

  He nodded. “What was it?”

  “You misunderstood. It was nothing.” She held her drink in both hands and seemed to be forcing herself to look at him. “What are you and your wife going to do now?”

  “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

  “Please,” she said pleadingly into her drink. “I asked you what you and your wife are going to do now.”

  “There was something then.”

  “Will you stop? I told you you misunderstood. It was nothing. Nothing.”

  He said calmly, “I don’t believe it.”

  She muttered, “Don’t believe it, then.”

  “Dr. Schlessenger has told you about me?”

  “Of course, he has.” She would not look up.

  “He told you I don’t remember anything for the past eleven years.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you about Virginia, too?”

  She looked up with startled eyes.

  He said, “Did he tell you she can’t remember either?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “I don’t know!” She stood up, glaring at him. “Walter, I want you to stop this. I’m not in the witness chair. I don’t have to answer all this! You don’t have the right—”

  He smiled. “Why are you so upset?”

  “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  “What do you know about what’s happened to Virginia and me? What is it that Dr. Schlessenger won’t tell me? What was it you were going to tell me yesterday?”

  He watched her face, a pale, gaunt face with the freckles much more in evidence now, and he saw her pulse in her neck, beating fast, and he watched her sink resignedly into a chair opposite him, staring at the drink she put down on the table.

  “Andrew is my husband,” she said harshly, coldly. “I don’t like what you’re implying.”

  “What is it I’m implying?”

  “Stop it. I told you I had nothing to say.”

  “Have you ever had amnesia, Mrs. Schlessenger?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know what it feels like to be unable to remember, do you? Strange faces that look into your own, seeking something within you that you can’t even find yourself.”

  “Please.”

  “Do you know what it’s like? It’s as if someone had put you into a time machine and moved you eleven years forward, as if you missed living completely those eleven years because you have no recollection of them.”

  “Walter, I—”

  “And then this girl beside you, the one that came back to you, you can see her and you’re told she’s your wife, and you think my God what she must have meant to me but I don’t even know it, don’t even know what I must have meant to her. And you stand there, both of you unable to share the happiness you must have had. Do you know what it feels like to be like that?”

  She turned grave eyes to him. “No—please…”

  “And then,” he said ruefully, “the crowning blow. The man who could help you says he’s sorry but it’s not his responsibility, that there’s nothing he can do.”

  “But there isn’t anything he can do!”

  “Isn’t there?” he asked fiercely.

  “No!”

  “Well, why isn’t there?”

  “Because—!” And suddenly her face broke and she dropped her head to her hands and then sent her head and hands to the table, striking the glass and sending it crashing to the floor. Unmindful of this, she emitted a series of small cries from her throat, a soft sobbing that convulsed her.

  Sherwood had not expected this. He stood and stared at her lowered head and shaking shoulders, uncertain now. He had gone too far, perhaps.

  “Mrs. Schlessenger,” he said gently.

  “Oh, leave me alone,” she moaned.

  He waited patiently until the shoulders stopped shaking and she lifted her tear-stained face from the table, fumbling for and finding a Kleenex in her pocket and dabbing at her eyes with it.

  “You’d better go,” she said without emotion. She blew her nose gently. “I can’t help you.”

  * * * *

  Virginia was not at home when he got there, which gave Sherwood a start and made him realize how much he had already come to depend on her. He had expected her to be surrounded by soap suds, mop
s and polish, and to be deep in thought, and he wondered if she had forsaken the cleaning to pursue some line of investigation that had occurred to her in the middle of her job.

  But he had no time to wonder about it. The phone jangled him out of it.

  “This is Kitty,” the breathless voice said. “I’ve been trying to run down Ollie. Hamp told me to call if I found out anything.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Yes. Ollie was fired by Dr. Schlessenger all right, and he did move out of his rooming house and go home, but he didn’t stay long in Detroit.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Right here in Merrittville.”

  “Back here?”

  “Yes. You see—” Pause. “Well, there’s a girl.”

  “Oh.”

  “Her name’s Gloria Conners. She lives over on Dempster Street.”

  “Where’s that? Do you know if he’s there now?”

  “No, he’s not there now. I just got through talking to him—”

  “Where did he go? I’ve got to see him.”

  “You’ll see him soon. He’s coming over to your place.”

  The front door chime sounded.

  He said, “There’s the door. I think he’s here now. Goodbye. And thanks, Kitty.”

  But it wasn’t Ollie.

  It was Virginia, her arms full of groceries. She gave him an odd look. “What’s the matter with you, Walter? You look feverish. Did something happen?”

  He held the door open for her. “Ollie’s coming.”

  “Oliver Lansing? Good.” She walked past him, saying, “Surprised to find me gone?” and headed toward the kitchen.

  “I thought you’d deserted me,” he said, following her.

  “I came home with the best of intentions, but I spied all those letters on the table. Mostly bills, so I paid them. Gas bill, light bill—did you know they hadn’t been paid for two months?—water bill, safety deposit box rental—we each have a key, I learned—grocery bill, payment to the savings and loan—we own this house, did you know that? Or should I say we have an equity in it. The whole trip took almost all the money I had. Oh, and I picked up a few things for lunch, too. How did things go with Mrs. Schlessenger?”

  “She went to pieces. The real news is Ollie. Kitty found out he’s been in Merrittville most of the time since he was fired. He has a girl friend here.”

  She stopped in her task of putting the groceries away long enough to say, “I hope you’re not disappointed, Walter.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “I mean I hope you’re not expecting Ollie to know too much.”

  “I’ll be grateful if he remembers anything at all.”

  He watched her as she moved about the kitchen looking cool and pretty and as if she belonged there, which she did, and he thought: she looks happy I don’t think she cares too much one way or the other in fact I know she doesn’t.

  “What’s Mrs. Schlessenger like?”

  “Oh, she’s got freckles, brown eyes—”

  Virginia gave him a withering look. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “Oh, I found her working in the garden. We went in the house and had a drink. When I started to question her about her husband she got hysterical.”

  “So she knows, too. Do you like corned beef loaf?” Before he could answer there were footsteps on the porch, the sound of the chime.

  “Ollie,” Sherwood said, turning to go.

  A thin, solemn young man with a pock-marked, owlish face stood on the porch, his large gray eyes friendly and guileless. He was nearly as tall as Sherwood, but he was angular, his open-collared gray shirt hung loosely on his frame and his wrinkled brown slacks had slipped a little from his waist toward his hips.

  “Hello, Doctor,” he said gruffly in a low voice that was at once in variance with his years.

  “Hello,” Sherwood said. “Come on in. We’ve been waiting for you.” He held the door open.

  The gray eyes swept past Sherwood. “Afternoon, Mrs. Sherwood,” he said with a nod.

  “Hello, Ollie,” Virginia said.

  Ollie darted a questioning look at Sherwood, a ghost of a smile crossed his face, and then he walked through the door.

  “You’ve talked to Kitty,” Sherwood said when they were inside and he was drawing a chair from the wall for him.

  “Yes,” Ollie said. “Kitty told me all about it.” He sat down awkwardly.

  Like a schoolboy, Sherwood thought. He sits there like a schoolboy uncomfortable at being invited to the schoolmaster’s house. Seeing him there like that, he began to doubt he would be much help.

  “Have you had lunch?” Virginia asked.

  “Why, no ma’am, I haven’t.”

  Sherwood could not wait. “I understand you used to help me in the lab, Ollie. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Ollie said.

  “We thought you might be able to help, shed some light on things.”

  “On how you lost your memories, you mean?”

  “Yes,” Sherwood said, groaning inwardly. There would be no revelation here, he thought.

  But he was wrong.

  “Well,” Ollie said, looking from one to the other, “I guess you might as well know you’re victims of the Sherwood Effect.”

  FIFTEEN

  It was a moment that changed things, much as the moment of waking in the Coronado had altered his life, obfuscating it, and all the little moments since then that had illuminated sections of it and brought them into sharp relief, but never quite completing the picture, each revelation dependent upon the next, like moves in a treasure hunt, a never-ending chain, a thread that had to end somewhere and he thought does it really end somewhere maybe it goes on and on compounding itself into an algebraic complexity of things, a progression into infinity.

  “The Sherwood Effect,” Virginia said slowly, as if tasting the words.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ollie said matter-of-factly. “Maybe you’ve heard of some others—the Ramsauer Effect, the Compton Effect, Raman Effect. Dr. Sherwood called his the Sherwood Effect.”

  “Just what is this Sherwood Effect?” Sherwood said.

  Ollie smiled wanly and looked down at his hands. “It’s nothing I can tell you right off the bat like that. I—I don’t know how to start telling it.”

  “Why not try starting at the beginning?” Virginia said sensibly.

  “Well, I don’t know.” Ollie looked at her, considered the suggestion and then swallowed. “I’ll try.” He became conscious of his hands and fiddled with them as he talked. “I started work at the Institute about a year ago. A little longer than that, maybe, but that’s close enough.” He looked up from his fingers.

  “I was supposed to help everybody, Dr. Schlessenger said. You see, I wanted to work for a year or so to get money to go on and get my master’s degree. I had a B.S. One of my teachers at the University—that’s the University of Detroit—knew Dr. Schlessenger. He’s pretty well known, you know. Anyway, that’s how I got the job. You’ve got to do things like that if you’re going to get what you want.”

  He paused.

  “We understand,” Sherwood said encouragingly.

  “The way it was supposed to work out was they were to use me any time they wanted, any way they wanted. I tried to be impartial about it, just as Dr. Schlessenger told me to be, but I couldn’t get along with Rayburn and Black. Wilhelm and Heneberry—they were only a few years older than I and I think it kind of embarrassed them to ask me to help them. So that left only Cox and you. But I was more interested in your work. It was closer to what I had liked—neurophysiology. And you’d answer my questions. Those other researchers, they’d just grunt when you asked them something. They pretended they were big wheels. But you weren’t like that.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Sherwood said. “I’m sure you were a great help to me.”

  “I’d like to think I was,” Ollie said shyly.

  “What kind of work was I doing?”

  “Your work, a
s I said, was more interesting than the rest. As far as I could see, the rest of them were doing regular things, checking up on this and that—stuff I’d just gone through in school. I couldn’t figure that out, Dr. Schlessenger letting them get away with that. You and Cox were the only real men out there. And you, Dr. Sherwood, you had ideas. Real ideas. Exciting ones. You used to talk about them all the time, though sometimes I thought you were talking more to yourself than to me. You know what I mean—daydreaming.”

  “What kind of ideas were they, Ollie?” Virginia asked.

  “Well,” Ollie said, frowning at Sherwood, “that’s what makes it so hard to explain. But take that stuff at first about Fritsch and Hitzig and their experiments in eighteen seventy. Or maybe that’s going too far back.”

  “Fritsch and Hitzig?”

  “They were scientists. Nineteenth century scientists. They worked with a dog.” He gave Sherwood a calculating look and plunged into it in a rush of words. “What they did was apply an electrical current to the exposed frontal cortex of a dog and the anesthetized dog moved the leg on the opposite side of his body.”

  “I see,” Sherwood said, impressed at the sudden change in the choice of words. “Go on.”

  “Well, you were interested in brain waves. You had an idea you could stimulate a brain to receive a mental image like a TV set. But you never got that far. You ran into the Sherwood Effect.”

  “The Sherwood Effect again.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid I’m not explaining this very well.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  Ollie wet his lips. “In epileptic seizure one of the brain’s electrical discharges gets out of rhythm with the rest of the brain. You told me that. You said it occurs in the ganglion cells and moves out, spreading higher voltages over neighboring areas and causes hallucinations or body movements.”

  Ollie stopped again and when no one said anything he went on. “You were trying to find out what causes some of the more common mental aberrations. You had an idea you could correct disorders with the proper stimulus, supplying the correct cortical rhythms to offset the breakdown symptoms.”

  Sherwood nodded. “I had a drive in that direction. It started with my father and firmed with my experience in the army.”

  “You told me about it. You were crazy to find it and you were awfully close to it.” He blushed. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”