The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack

by Robert Silverberg

  The reporter’s face reddened even more, he coughed a little to cover his embarrassment and then, certain that Miss Lawson had gone off the deep end as a result of all that happened, he excused himself to pursue another line.

  Sherwood was unprepared for the activity at 347 Walnut Street. First there were the rounds with the authorities and the newspapermen, and then there was Dr. Booey, who arrived and had to be brought up to date, to be followed by Virginia’s parents, the Applebys, who had to be filled in too, and Sherwood was sure they never fully understood it. As if all this wasn’t enough, the Coxes became frequent visitors, first for inside information and then to offer help. The upshot was that Sherwood had no time to think about any ultimate emergence from the cocoon of unremembrance—at least until Mrs. Schlessenger asked the Sherwoods to come to the hospital.

  They saw a pale Georgia Schlessenger, her face nearly as white as the pillowcase, and when they first entered the sun-bright room, he thought: even your freckles have faded, haven’t they? Her eyes were larger and more liquid than he remembered them. They looked less troubled, too. Her hair tumbled in graceful waves over the pillow and she smiled when they came in, and the room, already bright, seemed to glow with it.

  “I’m glad to see you,” she said, raising her free right arm and offering her hand across the bed. “I’ve been sitting here thinking about you two. I would have sent for you sooner but I just wasn’t up to it. Besides, there were things I had to work out.” She sat up, fluffed her pillow, slumped back and saw them still standing, so she said, “Sit down, sit down,” and indicated two chairs at the bedside. “A not so young woman wants to say something.”

  “Don’t talk that way,” Virginia said, taking one of the chairs, “you’re no old woman.”

  “I feel old,” she said, sighing. “I feel at least two hundred years old.” Then she smiled wryly. “But considering that I was shot at and hit, I’m feeling no great pain. Andrew was never a very good shot.” A remembered incident clouded her eyes and her forehead wrinkled a little. Then she turned to Sherwood and said gravely, “But I won’t say you and Mr. Lansing weren’t in danger when you were standing beside the car. Let’s just be thankful it ended the way it has.”

  Sherwood said, “I didn’t mean to push Dr. Schlessenger into anything so violent.”

  “Don’t excuse yourself,” she said sharply. “You had every right to do what you did.” Then she said with difficulty, haltingly, “I only wish it hadn’t been necessary.” Her eyes started to well with tears, but she fought them and looked out the hospital window to the rolling countryside of sand and bush and tree. “I warned Andrew, but he was one of those people who would never listen to anybody.”

  “You knew about it all,” Sherwood said gently, “is that it?”

  She turned back, saying, “Yes, I knew about it all, and I wanted to tell you, but I could never do it. I tried to make Andrew see it my way, but he never would. I was in the office pleading with him to let you know, trying to make him see how unfair it was, when you two came in with Oliver Lansing. I knew then it was the end—or the beginning.” She smiled bleakly and went on, “As it turned out, it was both.”

  After a moment, Virginia said, “Both?”

  Mrs. Schlessenger said, “I will explain, but I’d better go back to the beginning.” She looked out the window again as if to search there for a place to start. “Andrew was an opportunist. I knew that when I married him. I thought our association together would blossom into something beautiful in spite of the fact that I felt from the start that he didn’t love me. My mistake was thinking I could ever change him. But I learned nobody ever changed Andrew. The tragedy is that I had to learn so late.

  “I didn’t know at first he was such a liar and cheat. For years I kept him surrounded by an aura that existed only in my mind. It was like wearing glasses that don’t focus right—or being without glasses when you need them. What I’m trying to say is that I never saw Andrew clearly for years. He was blurred. It was much later that my vision cleared and I found him to be the man you know he was. You’d be surprised at the things I discovered about him—things that made me wonder if he even had any right to his degrees. But don’t misunderstand me: there was nothing stupid about Andrew in spite of the things he claimed that were not true. He was, in his way, a rather brilliant man, a man always putting himself to the test, compounding his lies and being successful in covering one group with another. It was a pity he used his intelligence for such a petty thing. He wasted his life covering up his deceits. He never seemed to realize he could have gone just as far being an honest man.”

  For several minutes she was lost in her own thoughts, lips parted slightly, looking out to the distant sand hills. Then she said, “Perhaps it was a mistake to suggest the Institute. I thought if he had real responsibilities—in this case to the government, the National Science Foundation, the employees, Merrittville itself, and to me—he might change and become the man I knew he could be if he wanted.

  “For a long time I thought it was working. Andrew was happy at the Institute and the knowledge that he was the director of it gave him a real-life position of respect. He made several unfortunate choices in researchers, was angry when the National Science Foundation did not see eye-to-eye with him about procedure and program. I think he was actually surprised when they said they expected results. I think he suddenly realized the Institute was no playhouse, that he would have to produce. He knew he couldn’t count on the friends he had hired, so he put out hooks for promising young researchers, found you and Mr. Cox, and because he wanted to show the National Science Foundation they didn’t know what they were talking about, he kept after you two to produce something truly sensational.”

  Georgia Schlessenger fluffed the pillow again. “I first heard of the TV idea about a year ago. Andrew said you were working on a device to shoot thoughts into people’s heads. He didn’t talk much about it because he didn’t think it could be done, but one night he came home all disturbed. You’d told him you’d given the machine a try and erased memory instead. That got him started along a new line and he thought of any number of uses for such a thing, all with mounting enthusiasm; some of his ideas make me ashamed to remember them, but that was another thing about Andrew: he had no shame. Sometimes I think he told me things just to taunt me. He thought I was too stiff and unbending because I refused to descend to his level.

  “He became really excited later when you told him how you thought the machine could raise intelligence levels and aid memory through temporary lapse. He told me he noticed the change in you and the way he talked I knew he envied it. He tried to get you to let him try it, but you said it wasn’t perfected yet.”.

  Mrs. Schlessenger smiled. “He was like a small boy. When you told him he’d have to wait, he stamped his foot and told you he was director of the Institute and he was ordering you to let him use it. You just shrugged and told him there was plenty of time, that you had to iron out a few of the bugs before you’d trust anybody else with it. At least that’s what Andrew said when he came home storming about it, and I guess it was true. I never saw him quite so furious.” She managed a little laugh. “One moment Dr. Sherwood was a wonderful man, a man full of ideas and promise, the researcher who was going to save the Institute and make the men at the National Science Foundation sit up and take notice. The next moment you were a man to be watched because you were going to keep your little device all to yourself. You were no longer to be trusted and you were trying to cheat the Institute out of what was rightfully Andrew’s. That shows how he rationalized everything.”

  “Without a memory, a man needs not be watched,” Sherwood said. “So he erased ours.”

  “It wasn’t impulsive. It was a thing that grew, much as a malignant thing does, little by little, until it can’t be rooted out. First he worked on you in the laboratory, tried to bring you around to share the suppressor-stimulator with him. But I don’t think you trusted him any more when you saw how anxious he was. I think
you were afraid he’d misuse it or perhaps announce it was his own discovery. Oh, I don’t know just what you did think, but I do know you didn’t leave it in the lab. You took it home with you every night. Poor, frustrated Andrew! How he kept wishing you’d forget it just once!

  “Then when he saw he wasn’t going to get the device itself, he started his plans jag, which is what I finally called it. He was after you night and day to draw plans for the device. ‘Suppose something happened to you, Walter?’ he’d say. ‘Where would the Institute be?’ But you said the Institute would still have the machine. Then he’d say, ‘But suppose something happened to you and the machine?’ Then, I remember Andrew telling it—and he didn’t think it was funny—you said, ‘Well, suppose I draw the plans and something happens to me and the machine and the plans? Aren’t plans just something else to worry about?’

  “That only made Andrew more angry, more furtive. You were sidestepping every thrust. It never occurred to Andrew that he could have gained everything by simply being straightforward; your resistance only made him more compulsive than ever about it. The machine, he’d have to get the machine. The machine, day in and day out, the machine. He didn’t really think about what he’d do with it when he got it; his whole life settled into scheming to get it.”

  Mrs. Schlessenger stopped, her eyes slid to her right hand where she picked at the bedspread. “It became so important that he get it that Andrew ate little and slept less. For the machine he was ready to go farther than he had ever gone for anything in his life. He was, in fact, ready to kill for it.”

  Her eyes came up challengingly. “I shouldn’t say that, perhaps, but it is true. I can only thank God that he didn’t carry out some of the plans he had. The thing he did do is bad enough. When he left with you for California I knew it wasn’t what it appeared to be—a simple trip to the convention—and I confronted Andrew with it, challenged him, told him I knew he was going to do something. We had a scene before he left, but he refused to say anything. I think he was afraid I would somehow be able to warn you, knowing how I felt about the way he was thinking.”

  There was a pause and Sherwood said, “When he came back from California he told you I had quit, I suppose?”

  “No,” Mrs. Schlessenger said, frowning, lost in the remembered return of her husband. “Not right away. I heard it from someone else—I think it was from Mrs. Cox.” Remembering the return more vividly now, she narrowed her eyes a little. “No, Andrew didn’t tell me anything about you. He was far too upset for that.”

  Virginia said, “Upset, Mrs. Schlessenger?”

  “Yes. I suppose you know how he managed to get the machine?”

  “I had to put it somewhere,” Sherwood said. “I guessed he got it out of the safe. Is that right?”

  “Yes. He went to the office an hour before you started west. He was very jubilant that morning. You know, too, how the erasure was. handled?”

  “The head of our bed was next to his wall. He put the device on a chair or something on his side and let it run most of the night.”

  “That’s right. Andrew thought he was particularly clever doing that.”

  Virginia reminded her, “You said Dr. Schlessenger was upset when he returned.”

  “He was. You see, the morning after he erased your memories he picked up the machine in its leather box, rented a car to go to Santa Barbara for the convention. On the way he had an accident. A man in a sports car sideswiped his car, crushed the suitcase containing the suppressor-stimulator. Neither Andrew nor the other driver was hurt, but the gadget was wrecked. Andrew said he cried like a baby when he picked up the pieces. He could hardly keep from weeping when he was telling me about it.”

  “So the machine is ruined,” Sherwood said gravely.

  “Yes, the machine is ruined,” Mrs. Schlessenger said. “Andrew brought it back, tried to work it over, but it was beyond repair and he had no idea what went where—or even if it was all there.”

  Sherwood sighed wearily, left the chair and went to the window Mrs. Schlessenger had been looking out of. “That’s what Dr. Schlessenger meant when he said the door’s been locked and the key’s been thrown away.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes. He also said he was the final victor. I guess he’s right.” He turned to her. “Where is the gadget now? In the safe?”

  “Yes. That’s why he didn’t want you to go back to the lab.”

  “I’d like to take a look at it.”

  Virginia said brightly, “I see now why Dr. Schlessenger couldn’t erase Ollie’s memory. I’ll wager he’d planned to do it when he returned and was pretty hard put to think of a way to get rid of him.”

  Sherwood grunted. “No wonder he didn’t do anything with the outfit. He didn’t even have it, or at least he didn’t have a working model of it. And as a result all he needed to do was sit tight and hope Ollie never showed up, hope you would never say anything. Who could prove anything? What law covers deliberate erasure of memory?”

  Mrs. Schlessenger said, “He was determined to have his toy at any price, except that when he did get it, it was ruined for him. Still he thought he’d be able to talk and think his way out of this bigger lie, the biggest one, he’d ever lived. It was too bad he didn’t have the device to improve his memory and raise his intelligence. He might have become the—who can say what he would have done? I’ve thought of it often enough.”

  Sherwood said dismally, “But since it’s broken and there’s no way to put it back together—”

  “Not necessarily, Dr. Sherwood. Andrew was certain you made some sort of schematic, some sort of diagram. He mentioned that to me several times.”

  “It may have been wishful thinking.”

  “No. He said he saw you working on a diagram, that’s how sure he was.”

  Mrs. Schlessenger’s voice had changed a little and Sherwood looked at her sharply. There was a brightness of eye, a flush of cheek, and he was puzzled by it. He said, “How sure are you that such a thing exists?”

  She answered his look with steady eyes. “Sure enough to offer you something.”

  “What?”

  “The Institute. I want you to run it the way it ought to be run.”

  Virginia said in surprise, “You want Walter to run the Institute? Why, Mrs. Schlessenger?”

  “Why?” Her eyes flickered to her coolly, then they warmed and she smiled, saying, “I will be frank with you, Mrs. Sherwood. I think Walter was made for the Institute. Oh, not the Walter we see before us now, but the Walter that was. He was much more the director than Andrew ever was. He is what I wanted Andrew to be, and I want him to have the Institute very much, Mrs. Sherwood.”

  Seeing the uncertain look in Virginia’s eyes, she went on tightly, “As for myself, I’ve had enough of Merrittville. I think I shall go to Europe, someplace in Europe.”

  NINETEEN

  In their missing state the plans were as much of an obstacle as Schlessenger had ever been, and when they were

  not immediately found, they concentrated on the possibility of reassembling the suppressor-stimulator, a disarray of wires, crumpled printed circuits, transistors and crystals.

  Booey grunted when he saw it. “This is more confusing than not finding it at all,” he said, rubbing his bald head with the flat of his hand. “I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it would look like, but it was nothing like this.” He shook his head and pushed around a few of the pieces on the lab desk.

  Ollie was helpful, but although he knew where most of the components went he could not explain how they were hooked up. “Besides,” he said, “I don’t remember half these things. I think Schlessenger mixed something else with this.”

  That’s when the work turned in earnest to the missing diagram, the reality of which Ollie could vouch for. Did you actually see them? he was asked. No, he said. Could they have existed? Yes. What would they look like? Probably ink on tough paper. Would they have been made in the laboratory? Probably.

  It always
came back to that. The schematics would have to be in the lab. Were they still there?

  They spent many hours searching, looking behind drawers, on the underside of drawers, tapping the woodwork on desks and on the wall and molding. When they were sure the diagrams could not possibly be in the laboratory, they moved to Schlessenger’s desk and file, just in case he had found them and had not been able to make use of them yet. Then they moved to the other rooms and the other laboratories, always with the same result.

  Finally, certain there was no chance the diagrams could be at the Institute, they moved out of the building, Sherwood, Ollie, Booey and Appleby, deciding to do Sherwood’s house next. They went over it inch-by-inch, tapping boards again for secret places and panels. But it was fruitless, and when it was over the exhausted searchers could think of nowhere else to look.

  Appleby said at last, “I think we’d all feel better if we went fishing,” and when Booey laughed because the idea was the farthest thing from his mind, Appleby went on, “No, I mean it. They’re biting good everywhere. And I mean the big fish. Deep-sea fishing in the Bay.”

  “That would be giving up,” Sherwood said. “I for one couldn’t fish thinking about those plans.”

  “If I had a cow that I couldn’t find,” Appleby said, “I’d do something else for a while and in the meantime try to figure out where I’d have gone if I were a cow.”

  Booey laughed at this. “I think you’re right. We’re trying too hard. What do you say, Walter?”

  “No, Doctor. You fellows go ahead.”

  Ollie said hopefuly, “I’ve never been deep-sea fishing.”

  When they were gone, Sherwood wished that he had gone with them, thinking how ridiculous it was for him to stay behind when he could have thought just as well out on the water. He went upstairs and lay on the bed, trying to relax every muscle so he could give his entire body over to the problem of what the insulated part of his mind had done with the drawings. They must be somewhere, he told himself. Think, think, think! And all he could conjure before his mind’s eye were fish jumping out of the water. Next he tried putting himself in his place, as Appleby had done with his cows, but he got nowhere doing this.