Marune: Alastor 933 (3 page)

“I don’t know; I don’t remember anything earlier than the last two or three months.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear this!” said Ariel in confusion. “Well, in case you don’t know, there are no real continents here on Numenes, just islands. Everybody who lives here owns a boat.”

“That seems very pleasant.”

Ariel gingerly touched upon Pardero’s disability, watching sidelong to see if he evinced sensitivity or discomfort. “What a strange sensation not to know yourself! How does it feel?”

Pardero considered a moment. “Well - it doesn’t hurt.”

“I’m relieved to bear that! Think: you might be almost anyone - perhaps rich and important!”

“More likely I’m someone very ordinary: a road-mender, or a wandering dog-barber.”

“I’m sure not!” declared Ariel. “You seem - well …” she hesitated, then continued with a half-embarrassed laugh “- a very confident and intelligent person.”

“I hope you are right.” Pardero looked at her and sighed, wistful that her fresh blond charm must so soon pass from his life. “What will they do with me?”

“Nothing alarming. Your case will be studied by very clever persons using the most elaborate mechanisms. Almost certainly you will be cured.”

Pardero felt a pang of uneasiness. “It’s quite a gamble. I might easily be someone I don’t want to be.”

Ariel could not restrain a grin. “As I understand it, this is the reason persons become amnesiac in the first place.”

Pardero made a glum sound. “Aren’t you alarmed, riding with a man who likely is a shameful criminal?”

“I’m paid to be brave. I escort persons much more alarming than you.”

Pardero looked out across Flor Solana Island. Ahead he saw a pavilion constructed of pale ribs and translucent panels, whose complexity was obscured behind jacinth palms and cinniborines.

As the aircab approached, six domes became evident, with wings radiating in six directions. Pardero asked: “Is this the hospital?”

“The hospital is everything you see. The Hexad is the computative center. The smaller buildings are laboratories and surgeries. Patients are housed in the wings. That will be your home until you are restored to health.”

Pardero asked diffidently: “And what of you? Will I see you again?”

Ariel’s dimples deepened. “Do you want to?”

Pardero soberly considered the range of his inclinations. “Yes.”

Ariel said half-teasingly: “You’ll be so preoccupied that you’ll forget all about me.”

“I never want to forget anything again.”

Ariel chewed her lip thoughtfully. “You remember nothing of your past life?”

“Nothing.”

“Maybe you have a family: someone who loves you, and children.”

“I suppose this is possible … Somehow I suspect otherwise.”

“Most men seem to suspect otherwise … Well, I’ll have to think about it.”

The aircab landed; the two alighted and walked along a tree-shaded avenue toward the Hexad. Ariel glanced at him sidewise, and perhaps his obvious foreboding excited her compassion. She said in a voice which she intended to be cheerful but impersonal: “I’m out here often and as soon as you’ve started your treatments I’ll come to see you.”

Pardero smiled wanly. “I’ll look forward to the occasion.”

She conducted him to the reception area, and spoke a few words to an official, then took her leave. “Don’t forget!” she called over her shoulder, and the impersonality, intentionally or not, was gone from her voice. “I’ll see you soon!”

“I am O.T. Kolodin,” said a large rather rumpled man with an oversize nose and sparse untidy dark hair. “‘O.T.’ means ‘Ordinary Technician’; just call me Kolodin. You’re on my list, so we’ll be seeing something of each other. Come along; I’ll get you settled.”

Pardero bathed, submitted to a physical examination, and was issued a pale blue lightweight suit. Kolodin showed him to his chamber along one of the wings, and the two took a meal on a nearby terrace. Kolodin, not too much older than Pardero but incalculably more sophisticated, took a lively interest in Pardero’s condition. “I’ve never come in contact with such a case before. Fascinating!

It’s almost a shame to cure you!”

Pardero managed a wry smile. “I have doubts of my own. I’m told that I can’t remember because of some thing I want to forget. I might not like being cured.”

“It is a difficult position,” Kolodin agreed. “Still, affairs may not be so bad after all.” He glanced at his thumbnail, which responded with a set of glowing numbers. “In fifteen minutes we’ll meet with M.T. Rady, who will decide upon your therapy.”

The two returned to the Hexad. Kolodin ushered Pardero into the office of Master Technician Rady, and a moment later Rady himself appeared: a thin sharp-eyed man of middle age who already seemed to know the data relevant to Pardero’s case. He asked: “The spaceship which brought you to Bruse-Tansel: how was it named?”

“I can’t remember much about it.”

Rady nodded and touched a square of coarse sponge to each of Pardero’s shoulders. “This is an inoculation to facilitate a relaxed mind-state …

Relax back into your chair. Can you fix your mind upon something pleasant?”

The room dimmed; Pardero thought of Ariel. Rady said: “On the wall you will see a pair of designs. I want you to examine them, or if you prefer, you may close your eyes and rest … In fact, relax completely, and listen only to my voice; and when I tell you to sleep, then you may sleep.”

The designs on the wall, pulsed and swam; a soft sound, waxing and waning, seemed to absorb and obliterate all other sounds of the universe. The shapes on the wall had expanded to surround him, and the only reality was himself and his inner mind.

“I don’t know.” The voice sounded as if it were coming from a distant room, although it was his own voice. Odd. He heard a mumble whose significance he only half-heeded: “What was your father’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was your mother’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

More questions, sometimes casual, sometimes urgent, and always the same response, and finally the cessation of sound.

Pardero awoke in an empty office. Almost immediately Rady returned, to stand looking down at Pardero with a faint smile.

Pardero asked: “What did you learn?”

“Nothing to speak of. How do you feel?”

“Tired.”

“Quite normal. For the rest of the day, rest. Don’t worry about your condition; somehow we’ll get to the bottom of your case.”

“Suppose there’s nothing there? Suppose I have no memory?”

Rady refused to take the idea seriously. “Every cell in your body has a memory.

Your mind stores facts on many levels. For instance you have not forgotten how to speak.”

Pardero said dubiously: “When I arrived at Carfaunge, I knew very little. I could not talk. As soon as I heard a word I remembered its meaning and I could use it.”

Rady gave a curt nod. “This is the basis of a therapy we might well try.”

Pardero hesitated. “I might find my memory and discover myself to be a criminal.”

Rady’s eyes gleamed. “That is a chance you must take. The Connatic, after restoring your memory, might then decide to put you to death.”

Pardero grimaced. “Does the Connatic ever visit the hospital?”

“Undoubtedly. “Undoubtedly. He goes everywhere.”

“What does he look like?”

Rady shrugged. “In his official photographs he seems an important and imposing nobleman, because of his dress and accoutrements. But when he walks abroad, he goes quietly and is never recognized, and this is what he likes best. Four trillion folk inhabit Alastor Cluster, and it is said that the Connatic knows what each of them eats for breakfast.”

“In that case,” said Pardero, “perhaps I should simply go to ask the Connatic for the facts of my life.”

“It might come to that.”

The days passed, and then a week, and then two weeks. Rady attempted a dozen stratagems to loosen the blocked linkages in Pardero’s mind. He recorded responses to a gamut of stimulations: colors, sounds, odors, tastes, textures; heights and depths; lights and degrees of darkness On. a more complex level he charted Pardero’s reactions, overt, physiological, and cephalic, to absurdities and festivals, erotic conditions, cruelties and horrors, the faces of men, women, and children. A computational mechanism assimilated the results of the tests, compared them to known parameters, and synthesized an analog of Pardero’s psyche.

Rady, when he finally assessed the results of his tests, found little enlightenment. “Your basic reflexes are ordinary enough; one anomaly is your reaction to darkness, by which you seem to be curiously stimulated. Your social perceptivity seems underdeveloped, for which the amnesia may be to blame. You appear to be assertive rather than retiring; your response to music is minimal and color symbology has little meaning for you - possibly by reason of your amnesia. Odors stimulate you rather more than I might expect - but to no significant degree.” Rady leaned, back in his chair. “These tests might easily provoke some sort of conscious response. Have you noticed anything whatever?”

“Nothing.”

Rady nodded. “Very well. We will try a new tack. The theoretical basis is this: if your amnesia has resulted from circumstances which you are determined to forget, we can dissolve the amnesia by bringing these events to your conscious attention again. In order to do this, we must learn the nature of the traumatic circumstances. In short we must learn your identity and home environment.”

Pardero frowned and looked out the window. Rady watched intently. “You don’t care to learn your identity.”

Pardero gave him a crooked smile. “I did not say so.”

Rady shrugged. “The choice is yours. You can walk out of here at any time. The Social Service will find you employment and you can start a new life.”

Pardero shook his head. “I never could evade the pressure. Perhaps there are people who need me, who now grieve for me.”

Rady said only: “Tomorrow we’ll start the detective work.”

An hour after twilight Pardero met Ariel at a cafe and reported the events of the day. “Rady admitted bafflement,” said Pardero, with something like gloomy satisfaction. “Not in so many words of course. He also said that the only way to learn where I came from was to find out where I lived. In short, he wants to send me home. First we must find home. The detective work starts tomorrow.”

Ariel nodded thoughtfully. Tonight she was not her usual self; in fact, thought Pardero, she seemed strained, and preoccupied. He reached out to touch her soft blond hair, but she drew back.

“And then?” she asked.

“Nothing much. He told me that if I were reluctant to proceed, now was the time to make a decision.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him that I had to go on, that perhaps somewhere people searched for me.”

Ariel’s blue eyes darkened sorrowfully. “I cannot see you anymore, Pardero.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“For just the reasons you cited. Amnesiacs always wander away from their homes and then - well, form new attachments. Then their memory returns and the situation ends in tragedy.” Ariel rose to her feet. “I’ll say good-by now, before I change my mind.” She touched his hand, then walked away from the table.

Pardero watched her diminish down the avenue. He made no move to stop her.

Instead of one day, three days passed before O.T. Kolodin sought out Pardero.

“Today we visit the Connatic’s Palace and explore the Ring of Worlds.”

“I’ll enjoy the excursion. But why?”

“I’ve been looking into your past, and it turns out to be a hopeless tangle; or, more properly, a blur of uncertainties.”

“I could have told you that myself.”

“No doubt, but one must never take anything for granted. The facts, duly certified, are these. Sometime on tenth Mariel Gaean you appeared at Carfaunge Spaceport. This was an unusually busy day and you might have arrived aboard any of six ships of four different transport lines. The previous routes of these ships took them to a total of twenty-eight worlds, any of which might be your place of origin. Nine of these worlds are important junctions and it is possible that you made your voyage by two or even three stages. Amnesia would not be an insuperable objection. Stewards and depot personnel, taking you for a lackwit, would consult your ticket and shift you from ship to ship. In any case the number of worlds, depots, ships, and possible linkages becomes unmanageable. Or at least an inquiry of last resort. First we will visit the Connatic! Though I doubt if he will receive us personally.”

“Too bad! I would like to pay my respects.”

They rode by aircab across Flor Solana to Moniscq, a town beside the sea, thence under the Ocean of Equatorial Storms by submarine tunnel to Tremone Island. An airbus flew them south, and presently the Connatic’s so-called “palace” became visible, appearing first as a fragile shine, an unsubstantial glimmer in the air, which solidified into a tower of stupendous dimensions, standing upon five pylons, footed upon five islands. A thousand feet above the sea the pylons joined and flared, creating a dome of five groins, the underside of the first deck. Above rose the tower, up through the lower air, up through the sunny upper air, through a wisp of cirrus to terminate in the high sunlight. Kolodin asked casually: “Have you such towers on your home world?”1

Pardero glanced at him skeptically. “Are you trying to trick me? If I knew this, I wouldn’t be here.” He returned to contemplation of the tower. “And where does the Connatic live?”

“He has apartments at the pinnacle. Perhaps he stands up there now, by one of his windows. Again, perhaps not. It is never certain; after all, dissidents, rogues, and rebels are not unknown to Alastor, and precautions are in order.

Suppose, for example, that an assassin were sent to Numenes in the guise of an amnesiac, or perhaps as an amnesiac with horrid instructions latent in his mind.”

“I have no weapons,” said Pardero. “I am no assassin. The very thought causes me to shudder.”

“I must make a note of this. I believe that your psychometry also showed an aversion to murder. Well, if you are an assassin, the plan will not succeed, as I doubt if we shall see the Connatic today.”