Iron Head: Science Fiction Mystery Tales

by E. C. Tubb

“The drug erased memory,” said Carter. “I had just injected it when that damn jet made all that noise. You lost contact and Arden must have snapped out of trance. He was fully conscious and aware and then—” He made an expressive gesture. “No memory. None at all.”

  Hendrickson pursed his lips. “Total amnesia? Surely it must be more than that?”

  “A man can lose his memory and still be aware,” agreed Carter. “He may not know who he is or where he comes from or anything but he can still talk and still retain his personality. Arden can’t do anything and that is what worries me. The drug must have an unsuspected effect.” He remembered the dog, the test animal, and felt himself shudder as he looked at Arden. They had painlessly destroyed the dog—how could they painlessly destroy a man?

  “I never did trust that drug,” said Hendrickson. “I tried to warn Arden but he was too impatient. Snipping out complete memories sounds good but there has to be a snag.” He sounded petulant, a man trying to shift the blame, but Carter wasn’t fooled. Behind those words lay thought processes unconnected with what he was saying. It was a form of verbal doodling; patiently Carter waited for it to end.

  “We’ve assumed that the drug actually deletes a memory,” said Hendrickson. “Something like totally removing a thread from a piece of fabric, but, when you think about it, how can it do that? You just can’t remove the cells, and tests show that there is no increase in the electrical emissions of the brain when treated with the drug, no electrical discharge that is. So what happens to the erased memory? “

  Carter shrugged, but made a suggestion.

  “Cellular disruption?”

  “We found no scar tissue in the test animals even after having been treated with mammoth dosages,” reminded Hendrickson. “We know what happens in cases of loss of memory, there is simply a lack of communication, the memories are there but cannot be reached; like books in a library locked away out of sight. But this—” He shook his head as he stared at Arden. “This isn’t so simple.”

  Which, Carter felt, was an understatement of colossal magnitude. He felt no personal fear because the experiment had slipped control; there have always been men who insist on experimenting on themselves and, aside from some unpleasant publicity, he would not, personally, suffer. Not, that is, if you discount the loss of a friend, the personal conviction of blame and the knowledge that he had helped to destroy a fine mind and brilliant intelligence. He realised that Hendrickson was speaking.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, suppose the drug doesn’t act exactly as we assumed? Supposing it works in a different way—not by actually destroying the selected memory but by making it impossible to remember?”

  “Impossible to remember? “ Carter thought of the dog and, suddenly, it fitted. “That’s it! Destroy the ability to remember and the memory is as good as erased.” He looked down at Arden, his mind extrapolating the logical results of the concept, and he felt himself grow inwardly cold as he thought about it. “He can’t remember a thing,” he whispered. “He can’t even retain a memory. God! What must it be like?”

  *

  He opened his eyes and looked at a stranger.

  “Arden!” Carter was desperate with urgency, listen to me...”

  The words meant nothing, were just a dull succession of sounds without form or meaning. The stranger vanished, became as if he never was. Before him a wall sprang into being .A window. Darkness beyond the window. His eyes shifted but he knew nothing of the force which had turned his head; the memory of Carter’s hands dissolving as soon as formed. He looked at a corner of a room. A picture. The glowing shade of a lamp. Image following image, each new, each different even though the same, different because seen for the first time.

  “Arden!” A man stood before him appearing from nothingness. He moved forward, to Arden it was as if he saw a man, then a man, then a man. He looked at a face which suddenly appeared before him.

  “Arden!” Hendrickson was sweating. “Look at me,” he ordered. “You know me.” His face hung in space. “What’s the use,” he said hopelessly. “You can’t understand.”

  There was nothing he could understand. There was only a succession of images, a succession of sounds, a total lack of cohesion.

  A stranger appearing from nowhere and the word ‘you’.

  A stranger appearing from nowhere and the word ‘can’t’.

  A stranger appearing from nowhere and the word ‘understand’.

  Then nothing but blackness, the utter darkness of pre-creation, the deep, engulfing, non-existence of death.

  *

  Carter looked at the hypodermic in his hand, then at the slumped figure of Arden.

  “I was afraid it wouldn’t work,” he said. “No reason why it shouldn’t, of course—but I’m glad it did.”

  “Sedation should help,” said Hendrickson. He made a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. “The wonders of modern medicine,’ he said derisively. “The best panacea is still—simple sleep.”

  “Sleep that knits the ravelled sleeve of care,” quoted Carter. He put down the hypodermic and then asked defiantly, “What else can we do? “

  “Nothing,” Hendrickson said. “As I see it we have one hope. The test animals all received overdoses but we insisted on caution with Arden. We know the drug is transient; it has done all the damage it is going to do. Nature has seen to it that we are almost self-repairing. Now we have to wait and give nature a chance.”

  “In other words we do nothing.” Carter, filled with a sudden restlessness, rose and looked out of the window. Late as it was lights still shone along the streets, glared from the windows in the shopping centre, made brief paths from the lights of the few cars which were always to be found hurrying on their mysterious errands. An ambulance swung into view, slowed as it neared the hospital, vanished as it bore its cargo of suffering into the confines of the building. There would be work and, perhaps, life and death drama in the hospital theatre soon. Strangely it didn’t touch him. He felt almost in a world apart.

  As Arden, now unconscious, was in a world apart.

  Thought of Arden drove him from the window back into his chair. Hendrickson he noticed to his surprise, was asleep in his chair, his head lolling to one side, his mouth open, his breathing stentorian. Carter toyed with the thought of waking him then, glancing at Arden, dismissed the idea. There was nothing Hendrickson could do. Nothing that either of them could do. Nature had to be given its chance. In the meantime he could only speculate.

  Memory, how little they knew about it. Analogies were, at the best, crude and unsatisfactory but it was all they had. Was memory really like a library, the brain a complex filing cabinet, intelligence a means of utilising acquired data? Arden had, temporarily at least, lost the ability to retain a memory. The world, to him was a succession of unrelated images. Carter tried but found it impossible to imagine what such a world would be like. Sitting, head back against the chair, he did as he had so often done before. He tried to force himself into full empathy with his patient so that, by experiencing what they felt, he could gain understanding of the problems which tormented them.

  A world of flashing unrelated images. Things appearing from nowhere, vanishing as if they had never been, new images, always new because unremembered. A being living in an eternal now, no past, no future, only a present.

  Chaos. It wouldn’t last, it couldn’t. The lesions would heal and the mind struggle to repair itself. Inevitably the retention of memory would return—if it did not, then Arden, as a man, would be dead and only a mindless, tormented creature would be in his place. Carter didn’t want to think about it.

  Repair then, and a gradual retention of memory. The images would last a little longer, perhaps only as long as Arden concentrated on them. The world would take on a different aspect but, with improvement, would come fresh danger.

  Danger. Somehow he knew that he should feel a greater sense of urgency but fatigue claimed him and his thoughts were vague and almost unreal. Th
ere would be danger, to Arden, naturally, but how great or how imminent he couldn’t, at this time, determine. Later, when he was less tired. Later, when his mind was clear.

  He made one last effort to arouse himself and glanced towards Arden. He was still unconscious, safe in his drugged sleep. Carter sighed and yielded to the force closing his eyes. It was foolish of him to have thought of fear.

  Foolish—but his dreams were tormented.

  *

  “Carter!”

  He stirred, feeling the dryness of his mouth, the ache of his muscles, the grit beneath his eyelids.

  “Carter!” A hand shook him with rough urgency. He opened his eyes, squinting as the harsh light stabbed at them, looked at Hendrickson. Fatigue left him as he saw the other’s expression.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Arden’s gone!” Hendrickson stepped back, gestured towards the empty chair. “Vanished! Why the devil didn’t you wake me before going to sleep?”

  “He was drugged, unconscious...” Carter broke off his excuse as soon as he recognised it for what it was. “When did you wake?”

  “A few moments ago. Something must have woken me, perhaps it was the sound of the door. I saw that Arden had gone and woke you.” He paused, frowning. He said; “The door! I thought it was locked?”

  It still was.

  The door had an old fashioned lock; an inset mortice turned by a key. The key, as Carter found, was still in his pocket. Blankly he looked at Hendrickson.

  “The window!” Together they ran towards it, looked out, knew relief when they saw no huddled body lying in the street five stories below.

  “Perhaps he climbed out?”

  “In his condition?” Carter leaned far out of the window, scanning the walls with his eyes. It was getting light, the first pale flush of dawn lightening the sky. In the ghost-grey light the building was clearly visible. Even a trained athlete would have found it impossible to climb from the window—it was an unornamented opening in a smooth expanse of brick.

  Carter’s hands were trembling when he closed and locked the window. By all the rules of logic Arden should still be in the room. The door, locked when they had first entered, remained locked, the key in his pocket. The window was impassable. He felt the chill of a mounting panic.

  “He could have woken,” said Hendrickson. “He could have taken the key from your pocket, opened the door—”

  “—locked it and returned the key.” Carter strode impatiently towards the portal, produced the key, unlocked the door. “Remaining in the corridor while he did it.”

  “All right.” Hendrickson had made a mistake and admitted it. “How else?”

  “I’m not sure,” Carter hesitated, looking into the corridor outside. “Just before I fell asleep I began to speculate. Something worried me, a sense of danger, a growing fear, I don’t know what it was. If I hadn’t been so tired I could have worked it out but I was half-asleep and it didn’t seem all that important. And I had dreams...” He shook his head “Or were they dreams? But I can make a guess as to how Arden left this room.”

  “How?”

  “He walked through the wall!”

  *

  The hospital was very quiet. It was still too early for the wards to spring into life, for the patients to be roused, the beds made, temperatures taken, all the smooth, ordered routine of the treatment of the sick. Descending the stairs Carter had time to explain to Hendrickson what he had meant.

  “Memory is more than an accumulation of data; it is, in a sense, a way of life. We all of us have been conditioned to the world in which we live—but not all of us live in the same world. The conditioning, ‘memories’ of an African primitive, for example, are different to our own. Things we take for granted to him are magic. Magic, to him, can be very real nonsense to us.”

  “Social mores,” mused Hendrickson. “I’m with you.”

  “Stay with me.” Carter paused at the foot of a flight of stairs, looked down each arm of a traversing corridor, then continued downward. “Arden cannot retain a memory for more than a short period of time. We must assume that and the evidence proves it. Imagine yourself in such a position. The only reality would be what you could actually see—and that reality would be in a constant state of flux. You would have no sense of permanency, no time-awareness and no orientation. And you would have no taboos.”

  Words, thought Carter, were clumsy, things. Even as he ran down the stairs doing his best to explain to Hendrickson, his mind outstripped what he was saying, the mental concepts so beautifully clear. Clear and logical and, as he now knew, inevitable.

  Arden had no memories and no ability to retain a memory for more than a short period of time. He saw a wall. A wall with a door. A wall. A door. He didn’t know that walls were connected to form a room, that the room had a floor and ceiling, that the door was locked. He didn’t know that such a room was an unpassable enclosure. He had no taboos of conditioning, no painful, childhood memories which had ‘taught’ him that walls were solid, no weight of accepted evidence that a man in such a room could not escape.

  And so, because he was free of all tradition and taboos, because he didn’t know that he couldn’t do it, he had walked from the room.

  It was hard to accept. Had Carter been a mystic it would have been easier, for mystics know nothing is real, all is illusion, all things are, in essence, in the minds of the beholders. And, were they so far wrong?

  Close your eyes and, for you, the world ceases to be. Die and, for you, the universe is as if it had never been created. Dismiss a thing from your thoughts and that thing, for you, ceases to exist. Forgetfulness is an erasure, an elimination. Total forgetfulness is a total elimination. Arden had achieved total forgetfulness and now was in the process of creating his own world on the basis of his own experience.

  It was the danger which Carter had sensed and instinctively feared. The thing which now drove him to find Arden before it was too late.

  “He’s left the hospital.” Hendrickson rejoined Carter, his face shining with perspiration. “The night porter saw him leave. He called to him but Arden didn’t answer.”

  “The idiot!” Carter was furious. “A man in a hospital gown walks out of the building and the fool didn’t think to stop him?”

  “He recognised him.” It was explanation enough. Inwardly Carter cursed the student pranks which, to him, were a bane. The porter had thought it odd, naturally but once he had recognised Arden he had made his own assumptions. Various ‘rags’ had produced odder sights in the past.

  But there was no time for recriminations.

  Arden had to be found.

  *

  He was a small, lonely, somehow pathetic figure, the hospital robe loose about his body, stirred slightly by the dawn breeze, his hair ruffled, his slippers incongruous. He stood at the corner of a street not far from the hospital itself and Carter thanked fate for having allowed them to find him so soon.

  “Steady!” He caught hold of Hendrickson’s arm. “Have you the hypodermic?”

  “Will it be necessary?”

  “I think that it will.” Carter halted, staring down the street, thankful that aside from themselves, it seemed deserted. He was not deluded by the apparent helplessness of Arden. The man, though he wasn’t aware of it, had greater power than any human. He had to be caught before he could recognise that fact.

  “We’ll walk softly towards him,” ordered Carter. “As soon as you’re within reach use the hypodermic. If anyone bothers us we’ll say that he’s a patient who is a little mentally confused.”

  “Why can’t we just lead him back?”

  Carter sighed, knowing that, despite his explanations, Hendrickson still hadn’t fully grasped what they had to face. Arden had escaped from a locked room simply because he hadn’t known that he wasn’t supposed to be able to escape from it. It would be as simple for him to escape from human restraint, to move himself at will, to eliminate barriers, to—for want of a better word—perform miracles.

/>   “Now!”

  The small figure ahead of them had moved. Arden turned, hesitated, then, suddenly, was on the opposite side of the street and much further down.

  “Hurry!’ Carter began to run down the street, his shoes making hard, thudding noises on the pavement. Hendrickson puffed at his side. He had no breath for words but thoughts needed none. He had seen Arden’s abrupt move and accepted the need for haste.

  “Arden!” Carter shouted down the street hoping for nothing more than to delay their quarry. “Arden! Wait for us!”

  The words, of course, would carry no meaning but their sound, coming as it did from the unknown, might just attract his attention, Might, Carter hoped, prevent him from moving again in that shockingly abrupt manner, He paused on the verge of shouting again.

  Arden had halted close to a lamp standard, his face turned towards the shadowed doorways of the shops lining the street. From one of them a figure emerged. Carter could guess at the policeman’s curiosity.

  “Hurry!” he urged Hendrickson. “Hurry!”

  Any witness was bad enough but the officer was the last thing he wanted. There would be inquiries, explanations to make with the attendant danger than more would be dis-closed than was desirable. But that wasn’t the chief cause of Carter’s worry. Arden, with his new attributes, was unpredictable.

  Carter could guess how he made his sudden motions. Arden had no sudden sensation of motion, of walking step by step. It was just that his viewpoint simply altered; the world, literally, changing about him. He had no memory of previous images, no idea of orientation or perspective. He simply went where he wanted to be. Or he fashioned the world as he wished it making distant, small things, large near things. The effect was the same. He had no memory of ‘distance’ and for him it had no meaning.

  And, on the same basis of logic, he could eliminate any scene from his mind simply by wishing it erased.

  Carter didn’t want to find out what would actually happen to any object so ‘erased.’ Nothing, perhaps, there were certain natural forces which might prevent anything drastic happening at all. But Carter didn’t want to find out.