“Forget it. How did I go about it?”
“We studied—or rather you studied and I helped—Rahm stimulators and their waves. You know, those sawed-off ones. They have a rising phase. Lasts only a fraction of a millisecond.” Ollie moved forward in the chair, his hands forgotten, his speech no longer slow and halting. “We studied thyratron stimulators, too. Doctor. They can stimulate certain actions, you know—like eye movements. You do it by touching a certain point in the brain—the anterior half of the precentral gyrus, to be exact. It was exciting. You thought you were on the threshold of something.”
“It must have been exciting,” Virginia said. “You’re even making me feel it.”
“Well, Doctor, you used to say, ‘Look what we can do with a brain in front of us, an open brain into which we can poke a needle.’ And then you’d look at me and say, ‘Ollie, why can’t we do the same thing from a distance?’ See? You were really talking to yourself, but I was there. ‘We could give people hallucinations. Maybe if we reversed the whole thing we could take hallucinations away.’ You really believed there could be some neuronal activation of the temporal cortex from an external source.”
Ollie coughed a little self-consciously and went on. “The secret, you said, was in the thalamus. We’re continually bombarded by stimuli, you know, but few of them ever get by the thalamus. You used to tell me how it was like a juke box that would play a record only if the coin was a real one. You figured if you could influence the thalamus to accept a fake coin—stimulus—you’d have the problem solved.”
“Tell me something, Ollie,” Sherwood said, “did Dr. Schlessenger know about this?”
“About your work?”
“About this project.”
“Sure. Of course he knew. Why?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“Well, your theory was to attack the thalamus through sympathetic vibrations, cortical rhythms. Radio waves and other types of electromagnetic radiation just go right through our brains, you know, right through the thalamus, just as radio waves fail to activate a radio not tuned to receive them. So your idea was to duplicate cortical rhythms.
“In the lab you had an electronic stroboscope. A toposcope, it’s called. You could make people feel they were having an epileptic seizure by flashing it in synchronization with the person’s own brain waves. Not that that hadn’t ever been done before. You just pointed out that it was a step in the direction of getting out of the brain and influencing it from a distance.”
“I follow you,” Sherwood said.
“Your next step was electromagnetic. You used a beat crystal oscillator that would deliver in the neighborhood of a million megacycles, using two quartz crystals of different frequencies so that their difference was a million megacycles. You had me running all over Detroit trying to get the right stuff for you.”
“Now you’ve lost me,” Sherwood said. “But no matter, just keep going.”
“I’m not so sure about the rest of it. You said something about how you modulated this and suppressed all other frequencies with filters, and I think you mixed all this with still another crystal that provided a fifteen-cycle differential. That’s a typical rhythm of the brain. You thought it would influence the thalamus, vibrating as it was with a beat of fifteen.”
“You mean it didn’t?”
“You put it all together, inserted it into a small leather case like they use for electrical test instruments, plugged it in like a shaver and tried to propagate your thoughts. I was right there in the lab when you first tried it.”
“Did it work?”
“No.”
“What did happen?”
“It didn’t produce any thoughts or hallucinations. It just obliterated your memory. Same thing that a shock treatment does. Erases recall. Completely. Just like erasing a recorded piece of tape.”
“So that’s how it happened!”
“Yeah,” Ollie said, sighing. “That’s how it happened. You forgot everything you’d done for a whole week that first time, you had it on so long fiddling with it. It was just as though you’d never lived that week. Of course I had to try it. So you see?” He smiled and his thin face glowed. “I know just how you feel right now.”
“At last we know,” Virginia said softly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I built a trap,” Sherwood said, “and we fell in it.” He withdrew a cigarette from a crumpled package in his pocket, lighted it absently, thinking why hadn’t Schlessenger come right out and told them about it?
“There were some side effects,” Ollie was saying. “You found using the memory suppressor made it easier for you to solve problems. I guess it gave your mind a rest; at least that’s what you used to say. At night you’d set it to erase a week or so and the next morning your mind would be able to cope with the problem you were trying to solve a lot better. Rested the mind, sharpened the memory. You said you found yourself remembering things you’d forgotten years ago, little things a person would never remember ordinarily—names and dates and numbers. You were pretty excited about this phase of it, the way it stirred up things in your head.”
“I do remember things,” Sherwood said. “I found out about that in California.”
“You used to make it a game. You’d pick a certain date and try to remember everything you did on that day. I’d have to ask you all sorts of questions. You figured out a lot of uses for the suppressor-stimulator. You planned to use it to raise I.Q.s and you saw an immediate use for it in the psychiatric field.”
“In what way, Ollie?” Virginia asked.
“Dr. Sherwood thought it would supplant hypnotism and narcosynthesis—and work a lot better—in helping patients recall psychological traumas. There were other allied applications, too.”
“The short, exciting career of Dr. Walter Ryan Sherwood,” Sherwood said bitterly. “I committed mental suicide and took Virginia along with me.”
It was suddenly quiet in the living room, lunch forgotten, three minds occupied with all that had happened.
Then Virginia said, “What about Dr. Schlessenger? Where does he fit in all this?’
“He was trouble, ma’am. Just plain trouble. With a capital T. He was always there just when we didn’t want him, in the way, asking questions, prying, making suggestions. It finally got so we didn’t pay any attention to him. That made him angry. He didn’t bother us too much at first, but when he found out what Dr. Sherwood was doing he got all excited. I mean about the TV idea, trying to broadcast into other people’s minds. He was awfully disappointed when it didn’t work, but when Dr. Sherwood told him about the suppressor-stimulator aspect of it, he bounced back again. Wouldn’t let Dr. Sherwood rest, kept nagging him all the time to perfect it.”
Sherwood said, “So he knew all about it, how it worked and everything.”
“Oh, no. You told him you hadn’t worked it out the way you wanted it yet. You told him it would be dangerous to try to do anything with it the way it was. You wanted to set up a controlled project, you wanted to make sure it affected all minds the same way, but Dr. Schlessenger was all for announcing it right away. He got plenty mad when you wouldn’t go along. Then he started hounding you to put everything down on paper, but you knew why he wanted you to do that, so you told him you wouldn’t. As it was he kept poking around in the lab when you weren’t there, trying to find your notes, but you never left anything lying around. You’d even take the outfit home with you at night.”
Sherwood rose and crossed to an ash tray on a table by the stairs, jammed his cigarette down hard in it. “Did I ever put anything in that safe in the lab?”
“Sure, but you wouldn’t put this in it. You knew Dr. Schlessenger would find it there and you didn’t want him monkeying with it until you were ready.”
“I think I see now what happened,” Sherwood said. “When convention time came I had to put the device somewhere, so it was logical I would put it in the safe. I probably figured that since Schlessenger was coming along to the west co
ast it would be perfectly safe there. Only he managed to get it out of the safe and take it along and somehow use it out there to erase eleven years of our lives.”
“We know what the disease is I and how we came to get it,” Virginia said dismally, “but we don’t know how to get over it.”
“Get over it?” Ollie said. “Why, the memory circuits needn’t be suppressed forever.”
Sherwood looked at him sharply. “You mean our memories will be coming back?”
“Not without the suppressor-stimulator they won’t. It works both ways, you see. I guess I didn’t make that part of it very clear. You can lock or unlock your memory, suppress or activate the circuits at will.” He grinned. “it was weeks before you worked out the details so you could recover the memory of that week you lost when you first tried it. That’s when you discovered it not only brought back what you had suppressed but a lot of other memories as well, memories you had long forgotten.”
“Then all we need is this little machine, is that it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And Schlessenger’s got it,” Sherwood said quietly.
“Are you sure, Walter?”
“Of course. Where’s your intuition? He has to have it.”
“You think it’s in the safe?”
“Probably not.” Sherwood sat on the steps to the upstairs, lips between forefinger and thumb, scowling at the cracks in the old oak floor. “Let’s figure it out. Dr. Schlessenger wants the suppressor-stimulator because…”
“He’ll raise his own I.Q.,” Virginia said.
Sherwood nodded. “And he’ll stimulate his memory. He’ll get total recall.”
Ollie said, “One of the possible applications which may have interested Dr. Schlessenger was suggested by himself. He once said he could see an entire army rendered impotent when exposed to memory suppression. But he didn’t know then how weak the emanations are. To do what he suggested, you said he’d have to have a suppressor-stimulator the size of a large building. You also said it was ridiculous to think in terms of a weapon, that you hadn’t worked on it for that.”
“How near to the outfit do you have to be to get the benefit—or the injurious effects, as the case may be—of the suppressor-stimulator?”
“A few feet at the most. After that its effect falls off rapidly. At six feet there would be no appreciable effect.”
“All right,” Sherwood got up, walked slowly across the room, turned around and continued walking to and fro, saying, “The way I see it, he brings the suppressor along to California. He doesn’t know just when he’ll use it, but he knows he will somewhere, somehow. Once in the motel, with the convention in Santa Barbara the next day, he knows he’d better use it. He might not get a better opportunity. The set-up is a natural.”
Virginia said gravely, “Are you suggesting that he sneaked in and erased our memories during the night?”
Sherwood smiled. “Not at all. I think I know how he did it.”
“How?”
Sherwood turned to Ollie. “How long would it take to erase eleven years from a person’s life?”
“Oh, five or six hours. We found out you erase about a week with each half minute. The same for coming out of it, too.”
Virginia shook her head. “I can’t see Dr. Schlessenger sneaking in, leaving the machine and coming back for it in six hours.”
“Of course not,” Sherwood said. “That would be too risky for Schlessenger. He’d never take a chance like that. But I know how he could do it without ever leaving his room.”
“Our rooms joined,” Virginia said. “I see how.”
“Of course. He probably visited us, saw where the head of our bed was, right next to the wall separating our rooms, knew at once this was the opportunity he was looking for. He sets up the machine in. his place right next to the wall and the outfit works through the wall on us, Schlessenger staying as far away from it as possible.”
Ollie said, “He told me if I ever breathed a word about happened.”
“And I didn’t quit my job out there,” Sherwood said. “That was a lie.”
“I never thought you quit,” Ollie said. “I thought, when Dr. Schlessenger came back with the story that you had, that he’d fired you, that you’d told him you wouldn’t let him have the machine. I didn’t know he took the machine along with him.”
“He fired you, didn’t he, Ollie?’
“Yes. He came back and made up a lot of stuff about how I was stealing equipment.”
Sherwood nodded. “He doesn’t want you around to tell about the suppressor.”
Ollie said, “He told me if I ever breathed a word about anything that happened in the center he’d get the FBI after me for a breach of security. That didn’t scare me. But he also said if I ever returned to this country he’d get me sent to prison.” He grinned. “That bothered me a little, but he didn’t know about Gloria.”
“Gloria Conners,” Sherwood said.
“Yes. I went home for a while, just to go through the motions, you know, and then came back. Gloria and I are going to be married next week. I’m living at the Conners’s and staying out of sight.”
Virginia, who had been quietly studying Ollie, said suddenly, “We’re all forgetting one thing.”
“What’s that?” Sherwood asked.
“Dr. Schlessenger has made no apparent use of this suppressor-stimulator.”
“Maybe he’s biding his time. Or maybe he’s sharpening his wits with it.”
Virginia did not agree. “He’d have done something before this. In my book Dr. Schlessenger is a very vain man. He’d have done something.”
“Maybe not, Virginia.”
“And one other thing. Why didn’t he erase Ollie’s memory? That way it would have been complete and no one would have ever known. Surely he could have arranged that.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Sherwood said. After a pause he said, “Well, there’s only one way to find out and that’s to see Dr. Schlessenger and ask him. Are you game, Ollie?”
“I guess so,” Ollie said. “My only hope is he doesn’t have the thing handy. I don’t want to forget I’m engaged to a girl named Gloria.”
SIXTEEN
Dr. Andrew Schlessenoer’s expression was that of outrage when Sherwood opened the door of his office without knocking and made Virginia and Ollie pass through before him. It was only when the doctor’s eyes flickered over Ollie’s face that they for a moment betrayed concern.
Miss Lawson, who had been bypassed in the maneuver, rushed in behind Sherwood, saying, “I didn’t tell them they could come in, Doctor. They just walked by me…” She stood just inside the door, wringing her hands and looking for forgiveness in Schlessenger’s face.
A woman sitting in the chair facing the doctor turned a face, pale and drawn, toward them. It was Mrs. Schlessenger. When her eyes met Sherwood’s, she turned away.
Schlessenger said tersely, “You may leave, Miss Lawson,” and his secretary backed out of the office, closing the door silently behind her after one sweeping, fearful look at the three persons standing on the thick carpet before the desk.
Then the doctor slid his cold blue eyes to Sherwood, and the two men studied each other for a long, decisive moment, a division of time that suddenly congealed into an opaque, impenetrable barrier which the doctor shattered by saying, “What do you expect to gain by this intrusion, Dr. Sherwood?”
Sherwood brought over a chair from the wall for Virginia, saying, “Our memories, Dr. Schlessenger.”
“You won’t find your memories in this office.”
“Perhaps we can help you find yours, Doctor,” Virginia said.
“I’m disappointed your husband has convinced you this is the right thing to do, Mrs. Sherwood. I’ve told you what to do about your mental lapse. I extended the services of qualified men to both of you.”
“The trouble,” Sherwood said quietly, “is not with us.”
“Walter, if it weren’t for the fact that you’re sick—�
��
Sherwood smiled thinly. “Sick, Doctor?”
“Yes, sick. Your actions give every evidence of it, your delusions, your suspicions, your ideas that you’re being persecuted. All are symptoms of a psychosis.”
“Andrew—” Mrs. Schlessenger started to say.
“The pity of it is that we must all suffer.” His glance rested briefly on her. “Including my wife.” He turned back to Sherwood and demanded angrily, “Why for heaven’s sake did you have to see her? You’ve upset her terribly.”
“Maybe she had a reason to be upset,” Sherwood said.
“Andrew,” Mrs. Schlessenger said again, “I—”
“Georgia,” Schlessenger said firmly, “I’m not going to let you become involved in this. Will you please go out to Miss Lawson’s office until I finish in here.”
“No, Andrew.” She hunched down in her chair as if to become that much more unviewable, and Sherwood thought: she looks beaten, almost cringing and her face is the color of putty. What has Schlessenger done to her?
Schlessenger’s face reddened in the wake of his wife’s refusal to leave. He turned back to Sherwood and said, “You will have to go. I’m not going to allow Mrs. Schlessenger—”
“We’ll leave,” Virginia said scythe-like, “when you give us the suppressor-stimulator.”
“The what?”
“The device Walter invented that erases memory.”
Dr. Schlessenger’s face could have exhibited no more surprise. “What kind of gibberish is that? What are you talking about?”
Sherwood said, “The machine I put in the safe when we went to California. You brought it along and used it at the motel.”
Schlessenger slumped back in his chair, shook his head. “I’m willing to help you all I can, Walter, Mrs. Sherwood. I’ve told you both that. I offered to pay for treatment for either or both of you. I’ve offered to help you through school again. But coming in here talking nonsense doesn’t help make me want to continue the offer. Where, for heaven’s sake, did you latch on to this idea?”
Ollie said, “I told them.”
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack Page 36
