The Eleventh Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

by F. L. Wallace

  Glowing, literally, with pleasure, he bent over for Jordan to climb on his back. Then he kissed Nona and headed for the laboratory.

  Nona smiled and followed.

  “There are some things you don’t need words or machines to express,” Anti called out. “Keep that in mind, will you?”

  She submerged contentedly in the acid bath. Above the dome, the stars gleamed a bright welcome to the little world that flashed through interstellar space.

  FORGET ME NEARLY

  Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1954.

  The police counselor leaned forward and tapped the small nameplate on his desk, which said: Val Borgenese. “That’s my name,” he said. “Who are you?”

  The man across the desk shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said indistinctly.

  “Sometimes a simple approach works,” said the counselor, shoving aside the nameplate. “But not often. We haven’t found anything that’s effective in more than a small percentage of cases.” He blinked thoughtfully. “Names are difficult. A name is like clothing, put on or taken off, recognizable but not part of the person—the first thing forgotten and the last remembered.”

  The man with no name said nothing.

  “Try pet names,” suggested Borgenese. “You don’t have to be sure—just say the first thing you think of. It may be something your parents called you when you were a child.”

  The man stared vacantly, closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them and mumbled something.

  “What?” asked Borgenese.

  “Putsy,” said the man more distinctly. “The only thing I can think of is Putsy.”

  The counselor smiled. “That’s a pet name, of course, but it doesn’t help much. We can’t trace it, and I don’t think you’d want it as a permanent name.” He saw the expression on the man’s face and added hastily: “We haven’t given up, if that’s what you’re thinking. But it’s not easy to determine your identity. The most important source of information is your mind, and that was at the two year level when we found you. The fact that you recalled the word Putsy is an indication.”

  “Fingerprints,” said the man vaguely. “Can’t you trace me through fingerprints?”

  “That’s another clue,” said the counselor. “Not fingerprints, but the fact that you thought of them.” He jotted something down. “I’ll have to check those re-education tapes. They may be defective by now, we’ve run them so many times. Again, it may be merely that your mind refused to accept the proper information.”

  The man started to protest, but Borgenese cut him off. “Fingerprints were a fair means of identification in the Twentieth Century, but this is the Twenty-second Century.”

  The counselor then sat back. “You’re confused now. You have a lot of information you don’t know how to use yet. It was given to you fast, and your mind hasn’t fully absorbed it and put it in order. Sometimes it helps if you talk out your problems.”

  “I don’t know if I have a problem.” The man brushed his hand slowly across his eyes. “Where do I start?”

  “Let me do it for you,” suggested Borgenese. “You ask questions when you feel like it. It may help you.”

  He paused, “You were found two weeks ago in the Shelters. You know what those are?”

  The man nodded, and Borgenese went on: “Shelter and food for anyone who wants or needs it. Nothing fancy, of course, but no one has to ask or apply; he just walks in and there’s a place to sleep and periodically food is provided. It’s a favorite place to put people who’ve been retroed.”

  The man looked up. “Retroed?”

  “Slang,” said Borgenese. “The retrogression gun ionizes animal tissue, nerve cells particularly. Aim it at a man’s legs and the nerves in that area are drained of energy and his muscles won’t hold him up. He falls down.

  “Aim it at his head and give him the smallest charge the gun is adjustable to, and his most recent knowledge is subtracted from his memory. Give him the full charge, and he is swept back to a childish or infantile age level. The exact age he reaches is dependent on his physical and mental condition at the time he’s retroed.

  “Theoretically it’s possible to kill with the retrogression gun. The person can be taken back to a stage where there’s not enough nervous organization to sustain the life process.

  “However, life is tenacious. As the lower levels are reached, it takes increasing energy to subtract from anything that’s left. Most people who want to get rid of someone are satisfied to leave the victim somewhere between the mental ages of one and four. For practical purposes, the man they knew is dead—or retroed, as they say.”

  “Then that’s what they did to me,” said the man. “They retroed me and left me in the Shelter. How long was I there?”

  Borgenese shrugged. “Who knows? That’s what makes it difficult. A day, or two months. A child of two or three can feed himself, and no record is kept since the place is free. Also, it’s cleaned automatically.”

  “I know that now that you mention it,” said the man. “It’s just that it’s hard to remember.”

  “You see how it is,” said the counselor. “We can’t check our files against a date when someone disappeared, because we don’t know that date except within very broad limits.” He tapped his pen on the desk. “Do you object to a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “How many people in the Solar System?”

  The man thought with quiet desperation. “Fourteen to sixteen billion.”

  The counselor was pleased. “That’s right. You’re beginning to use some of the information we’ve put back into your mind. Earth, Mars and Venus are the main population centers. But there are also Mercury and the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, as well as the asteroids. We can check to see where you might have come from, but there are so many places and people that you can imagine the results.”

  “There must be some way,” the man said painfully. “Pictures, fingerprints, something.”

  “Something,” Borgenese nodded. “But probably not for quite a while. There’s another factor, you see. It’s a shock, but you’ve got to face it. And the funny thing is that you’ll never be better able to than now.”

  He rocked back. “Take the average person, full of unsuspected anxiety, even the happiest and most successful. Expose him to the retrogression gun. Tensions and frustrations are drained away.

  “The structure of an adult is still there, but it’s empty, waiting to be filled. Meanwhile the life of the organism goes on, but it’s not the same. Lines on the face disappear, the expression alters drastically, new cell growth occurs here and there throughout the body. Do you see what that means?”

  The man frowned. “I suppose no one can recognize me.”

  “That’s right. And it’s not only your face that changes. You may grow taller, but never shorter. If your hair was gray, it may darken, but not the reverse.”

  “Then I’m younger too?”

  “In a sense, though it’s actually not a rejuvenation process at all. The extra tension that everyone carries with him has been removed, and the body merely takes up the slack.

  “Generally, the apparent age is made less. A person of middle age or under seems to be three to fifteen years younger than before. You appear to be about twenty-seven, but you may actually be nearer forty. You see, we don’t even know what age group to check. And it’s the same with fingerprints. They’ve been altered by the retrogression process. Not a great deal, but enough to make identification impossible.”

  The nameless man stared around the room—at Val Borgenese, perhaps fifty, calm and pleasant, more of a counselor than a policeman—out of the window at the skyline, and its cleanly defined levels of air traffic.

  Where was his place in this?

  “I guess it’s no use,” he said bleakly. “You’ll never find out who I am.”

  The counselor smiled. “I think we will. Directly, there’s not much we can do, but there are indirect methods. In the last tw
o weeks we’ve exposed you to all the organized knowledge that can be put on tapes—physics, chemistry, biology, math, astrogation, the works.

  “It’s easy to remember what you once knew. It isn’t learning; it’s actually relearning. One fact put in your mind triggers another into existence. There’s a limit, of course, but usually a person comes out of re-education with slightly more formal knowledge than he had in his prior existence.” The counselor opened a folder on his desk. “We gave you a number of tests. You didn’t know the purpose, but I can tell you the results.”

  He leafed slowly through the sheets. “You may have been an entrepreneur of some sort. You have an excellent sense of power ethics. Additionally, we’ve found that you’re physically alert, and your reactions are well coordinated. This indicates you may have been an athlete or sportsman.”

  Val Borgenese laid down the tests. “In talking with you, I’ve learned more. The remark you made about fingerprints suggests you may have been a historian, specializing in the Twentieth Century. No one else is likely to know that there was a time in which fingerprints were a valid means of identification.”

  “I’m quite a guy, I suppose. Businessman, sportsman, historian.” The man smiled bitterly. “All that…but I still don’t know who I am. And you can’t help me.”

  “Is it important?” asked the counselor softly. “This happens to many people, you know, and some of them do find out who they were, with or without our help. But this is not simple amnesia. No one who’s been retroed can resume his former identity. Of course, if we had tapes of the factors which made each person what he is.…” He shrugged. “But those tapes don’t exist. Who knows, really, what caused him to develop as he has? Most of it isn’t at the conscious level. At best, if you should learn who you were, you’d have to pick up the thread of your former activities and acquaintances slowly and painfully.

  “Maybe it would be better if you start from where you are. You know as much as you once did, and the information is up to date, correct and undistorted. You’re younger, in a sense—in better physical condition, not so tense or nervous. Build up from that.”

  “But I don’t have a name.”

  “Choose one temporarily. You can have it made permanent if it suits you.”

  The man was silent, thinking. He looked up, not in despair, but not accepting all that the counselor said either. “What name? All I know is yours, and those of historical figures.”

  “That’s deliberate. We don’t put names on tapes, because the effects can be misleading. Everyone has thousands of associations, and can mistake the name of a prominent scientist for his own. Names unconsciously arrived at are usually no help at all.”

  “What do I do?” the man said. “If I don’t know names, how can I choose one?”

  “We have a list made up for this purpose. Go through it slowly and consciously. When you come to something you like, take it. If you chance on one that stirs memories, or rather where memories ought to be but aren’t, let me know. It may be a lead I can have traced.”

  The man gazed at the counselor. His thought processes were fast, but erratic. He could race along a chain of reasoning and then stumble over a simple fact. The counselor ought to know what he was talking about—this was no isolated occurrence. The police had a lot of experience to justify the treatment they were giving him. Still, he felt they were mistaken in ways he couldn’t formulate.

  “I’ll have to accept it, I suppose,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do to learn who I was.”

  The counselor shook his head. “Nothing that we can do. The clues are in the structure of your mind, and you have better access to it than we do. Read, think, look. Maybe you’ll run across your name. We can take it from there.” He paused. “That is, if you’re determined to go ahead.”

  That was a strange thing for a police counselor to say.

  “Of course I want to know who I am,” he said in surprise. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I’d rather not mention this, but you ought to know.” Borgenese shifted uncomfortably. “One third of the lost identity cases that we solve are self-inflicted. In other words, suicides.”

  * * * *

  His head rumbled with names long after he had decided on one and put the list away. Attractive names and odd ones—but which were significant he couldn’t say. There was more to living than the knowledge that could be put on tapes and played back. There was more than choosing a name. There was experience, and he lacked it. The world of personal reactions for him had started two weeks previously; it was not enough to help him know what he wanted to do.

  He sat down. The room was small but comfortable. As long as he stayed in retro-therapy, he couldn’t expect much freedom.

  He tried to weigh the factors. He could take a job and adapt himself to some mode of living.

  What kind of a job?

  He had the ordinary skills of the society—but no outstanding technical ability had been discovered in him. He had the ability of an entrepreneur—but without capital, that outlet was denied him.

  His mind and body were empty and waiting. In the next few months, no matter what he did, some of the urge to replace the missing sensations would be satisfied.

  The more he thought about that, the more powerfully he felt that he had to know who he was. Otherwise, proceeding to form impressions and opinions might result in a sort of betrayal of himself.

  Assume the worst, that he was a suicide. Maybe he had knowingly and willingly stepped out of his former life. A suicide would cover himself—would make certain that he could never trace himself back to his dangerous motive for the step. If he lived on Earth, he would go to Mars or Venus to strip himself of his unsatisfactory life. There were dozens of precautions anyone would take.

  But if it weren’t suicide, then who had retroed him and why? That was a question he couldn’t answer now, and didn’t need to. When he found out who he was, the motivation might be clear; if it wasn’t, at least he would have a basis on which to investigate that.

  If someone else had done it to him, deliberately or accidentally, that person would have taken precautions too. The difference was this: as a would-be suicide, he could travel freely to wherever he wished to start over again; while another person would have difficulty enticing him to a faroff place, or, assuming that the actual retrogression had taken place elsewhere, wouldn’t find it easy to transport an inert and memory-less body any distance.

  So, if he weren’t a suicide, there was a good chance that there were clues in this city. He might as well start with that idea—it was all he had to go on.

  He was free to stay in retro-therapy indefinitely, but with the restricted freedom he didn’t want to. The first step was to get out. He made the decision and felt better. He switched on the screen.

  Borgenese looked up. “Hello. Have you decided?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Let’s have it. It’s bound to touch on your former life in some way, though perhaps so remotely we can’t trace it. At least, it’s something.”

  “Luis Obispo.” He spelled it out.

  The police counselor looked dubious as he wrote the name down. “It’s not common, nor uncommon either. The spelling of the first name is a little different, but there must be countless Obispos scattered over the System.”

  It was curious. Now he almost did think of himself as Luis Obispo. He wanted to be that person. “Another thing,” he said. “Did I have any money when I was found?”

  “You’re thinking of leaving? A lot of them do.” Val Borgenese flipped open the folder again. “You did have money, an average amount. It won’t set you up in business, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I wasn’t. How do I get it?”

  “I didn’t think you were.” The counselor made another notation. “I’ll have the desk release it—you can get it any time. By the way, you get the full amount, no deductions for anything.”

  The news was welcome, considering what he had ahead of him.

/>   Borgenese was still speaking. “Whatever you do, keep in touch with us. It’ll take time to run down this name, and maybe we’ll draw a blank. But something significant may show up. If you’re serious, and I think you are, it’s to your advantage to check back every day or so.”

  “I’m serious,” said Luis. “I’ll keep in touch.”

  There wasn’t much to pack. The clothing he wore had been supplied by the police. Ordinary enough; it would pass on the street without comment. It would do until he could afford to get better.

  He went down to the desk and picked up his money. It was more than he’d expected—the average man didn’t carry this much in his pocket. He wondered about it briefly as he signed the receipt and walked out of retro-therapy. The counselor had said it was an average amount, but it wasn’t.

  He stood in the street in the dusk trying to orient himself.

  Perhaps the money wasn’t so puzzling. An average amount for those brought into therapy for treatment, perhaps. Borgenese had said a high proportion were suicides. Such a person would want to start over again minus fears and frustrations, but not completely penniless. If he had money he’d want to take it with him, though not so much that it could be traced, since that would defeat the original purpose.

  The pattern was logical—suicides were those with a fair sum of money. This was the fact which inclined Borgenese to the view he obviously held.

  Luis Obispo stood there uncertainly. Did he want to find out? His lips thinned—he did. In spite of Borgenese, there were other ways to account for the money he had. One of them was this: he was an important man, accustomed to handling large sums of money.

  He started out. He was in a small city of a few hundred thousand on the extreme southern coast of California. In the last few days he’d studied maps of it; he knew where he was going.

  * * * *

  When he got there, the Shelters were dark. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t this. Reflection showed him that he hadn’t thought about it clearly. The mere existence of Shelters indicated an economic level in which few people would either want or need to make use of that which was provided freely.